"Hello, Hoboken!" shouts grinning lead singer John Roderick of The Long Winters on a soggy Wednesday night at Maxwell’s (June 4) to a packed house. Most of them came to see headliners Nada Surf and were relieved to hear that this band at least knows where the heck they’re playing.
The crowd has just suffered through a 40 minute so-so set by a pretentious group called The Sleepy Jackson doing their best New York Dolls theatrical impression to a less-than-receptive audience (particularly when the lead singer continued to refer to Hoboken as "New Jersey City").
The audience apparently did not appreciate the preening style over substance favored by some recent New York underground acts.
Headliners Nada Surf came on at around 11 p.m. The New York-based band is in stark contrast to the more recent area trend of style, despite guitarist/singer Daniel Lorca’s white-boy dreads and onstage affability.
Lead singer Matthew Caws brooked any heckling from the crowd with a smiling face and a friendly quip. They played around 20 songs in their initial hour and 20-minute set, and then came back on stage for another 20 minutes.
Aided by a synthesizer-packing keyboardist, they played band standards from "The Plan" to "Bad Best Friend," to their hit "Popular" from 1996 album The Hi/Low, and even found time to cover "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by New Wavers Joy Division. They also played tracks from their new album Let Go.
The quirky edgy trio have been around since the mid-’90s and had a brush with big label exposure Elektra on the strength of their first album before they were dropped for lack of more "marketable" material. The band hit the ground running and started their own label, Mardev Records, to release their albums independently.
While the band was on their three-month European tour last fall, they played a gig at the International Student House in London, England. The opening band was dull, and when Nada took the stage, the crowd pressed close to the stage and started screaming out favorite songs with heavily accented voices in a giddy fashion. This is the European audience the band created some four years ago.
It seems that currently, Nada is enjoying the ability to play big and small venues. They are currently on the East Coast leg of their North American tour with The Long Winters and hosted a midnight underground rock video show titled Subterranean on MTV2 on June 6.
For information on the band visit www.nadasurf.com.
Bill McGarvey
The red in the simple three-color stage lighting arrangement envelopes Hoboken resident Bill McGarvey like a familiar suit during his performance at Maxwell’s on May 28.
Not only does it exaggerate color on his sweating face, but the beam gives an almost eruptive hue to his motions behind the stand-up cocktail drums he plays and the folk-pop melodies pouring from between his teeth.
Approximately 30 people stand in the audience to see him open up a show for two "up-and-coming" area rock acts, the Saucers and Planet Janet. The members of both bands are at least a decade younger than the 30-something McGarvey, and most in this small crowd watching him seem to skew toward their 20s and 30s.
While they are receptive and polite throughout the set, the fans are not the most raucous. Regardless, unsigned musician promoter from Central Jersey Andy Gesner (Artist Amplification) stands toward what would be the front row with a smile on his face. He knows that having the locally based McGarvey open for two relatively unknowns (at least in Hoboken), is a good way to draw a musically savvy (if agedly mature) group of people to a show, in addition to the local teens who will come in after McGarvey’s set.
Crowd size doesn’t seem to bother McGarvey, who is currently on an open-ended tour to promote his new album Tell Your Mother. He and his band, The Good Thieves, go through a rollicking and fast-paced 30-minute set of 10 songs with the earnest and able precision of veterans. McGarvey switches easily between playing guitar and drums and hardly breaks stride, even when he’s forced to pause to fix a broken drum pedal. Most of the songs have inflections of the Top 40 radio bands of the ’60s McGarvey said he grew up with. His songs have a nostalgic tinge ready-made for radio.
While this Maxwell’s show is injected with the louder tom-tom beat of his drumming, McGarvey’s music in general is wrought with energetic, upbeat lyrics that are relentlessly easy to listen too without being too silly or ostentatious. For information on McGarvey visit www.billmcgarvey.com. q