My friend Maxx is the sort of person who listens to every kind of music ever, but with a predilection towards punk music and interesting sounds. He goes to concerts a lot and is prone to accidentally finding these awesome bands. He gets really excited about them, and it's a lot of fun to talk about music with him.
A while ago he had told me about a band he had seen over the summer, opening for some other band at the Middle East in Boston. This band, he said, was "fuckin' amazing" and insisted I listen to them. He proceeded to give me all of their recorded albums. I added them to my iTunes and sort of left them alone for while. I listened to them a little bit and decided I liked them but hadn't found the right context to fully appreciate it. Maxx had mentioned that they were playing a show in Manchester, NH when we got back to school and I should come.
Now - I have a tendency to be informed of these sorts of things and immediately forget about them. I also have a tendency to arbitrarily end up places without necessarily planning on it... which is how when I woke up at 3 PM today, I was convinced to go to Manchester to some sketchy bar to see a band I was almost unfamiliar with play.
After suffering through some shitty, shitty opening bands including one which was made up of three fourteen-year-olds (mutilating early Green Day, The Offspring, AND The Strokes - yes, it was a crime against humanity), some sort of screamo/metalcore band which was technically really cool for a high school band but sometimes tedious to actually listen to (screamo is DONE, guys, nice try though. Also your name was something like "Beautiful Imperfection in Loneliness") and this circa-2001 punk-pop band who were unfortunately comprised mostly of assholes playing fun music.
At this point I was hoping the band we were actually there to see would be worth this trip. I had been promised a "killer live show" and while the opening bands paraded on, I had been seriously contemplating going downstairs to have a few drinks just to make this whole experience mildly entertaining.
And then Kiss Kiss started to play. I don't really know how to describe this other than say "a controlled noise experiment" wherein it becomes a mission to see how many more ways one can make noise sound sonically pleasant. No understatement - their performance redeemed the entire experience thus far. Part Arcade Fire, part St. Vincent, part noise rock, all awesome (and a splash of Heather is a hipster at heart). I can't find any sort of YouTube video which do them justice, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Maxx was totally right.
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