Great Show on Sunday! I did not write this review but agree with 99% of it! Lots of energy! For those of you who care the setlist and review are below: 01/18/09 The Town Ballroom, Buffalo, NY Set I: Shelby Rose> The City> Shelby Rose, Helicopters> Abraxas> Digital Buddha> Save The Robots1 Set II: Morph Dusseldorf> Spaga> Mindless Dribble> Kamaole Sands1, M.E.M.P.H.I.S.> Helicopters Encore: Above The Waves2> Morph Dusseldorf 1 ending only 2 dyslexic completion of 1/17 version Just in case there was any remaining speculation, Marc made it good and clear last night how much the boys love Buffalo (many times over). The sold out Town Ballroom was rarin' to go from the time the doors opened to usher the frozen masses in, and the intimate space again lived up to its deserved hype. The energy was higher when the band took the stage than it was at the outset of any of the Nokia shows. We were in for a treat... It was nice to see two songs off the bat that hadn't been played on the NYE run. While the opening sandwich was essentially just a warmup, the jams out of and back into Shelby were solid. The City is a decent song, although >'s into it are nothing spectacular. Still, this segment was played with feeling and power. The Helix jam was blazing hot from note one. Untz to the max, balls to the wall, etc. During this jam at some point my friends and I thought we heard Shadow coming, not sure whether that was a deliberate tease or not (anyone else hear it?). > Abraxas was raging, as extended peaks would emerge as the story of the night. Pretty sure it was the jam out of Abraxas in which Marc was on synth bass, Allen was all e-drumz, and Barber was using his new hand-activated toy. This jam was awesome, with all 4 players bringing new sounds to the table at once. Electric! > Buddha was great, although the opening lyrics kind of came out of nowhere, with Barber and Magner suddenly singing them over what still seemed like a jam. The jam coming out of Buddha, however, was straight fire. There was a segment where Allen slowed it down to half time and Marc began dropping disgusting bombs. Top notch exploration before re-untzing into the Robots end. This segue would be an example of the band pushing a peak to its absolute limit. Barber was taking risks all night and while the Robots peak was extended a bit too long for my taste, the place was going batshit and it closed off the set triumphantly. Ok...Morph>Spaga>Dribble>Kamaole. I mean, come on. They clearly came out swinging in the 2nd set, the Morph jam quickly delivering its dependable goodness. The seg > Spaga was of the techno variety, although it seemed as though they slowed it down a bit before Mags came in with the vocals. The Spaga jam was to the point and downright nasty. Allen moving like a speed demon, the band firing on all cylinders, they powered back into the guitar hook with gusto. After a slight vocal misstep from Barber, they stretched out the organ solo section and took it to a new place (think of how they pushed the slap-bass section of Basis on 12/30 before bringing it back). After playing around in fresh territory for a couple minutes, the band brought back the Spaga groove with Magner still soloing overtop. But instead of returning to the 'ba-da-bahs', they again morphed the jam and cranked up the tempo... The only complaint one could muster regarding this Dribble, I guess, would be Allen's tendency to go into hyper mode way early, thus giving away the Dribble seg. No matter, as this (unfinished) version provided the jam of the night as I heard them. Patient, explosive, multi-thematic, long, and awesome. I am very excited to re-listen to this one. No 2nd verse, just a juggernaut of a jam which eventually turned major and wound up in the end of Kamaole. I'm not a fan of this song, but the ending is fine by me. I was just thankful there was no inversion. MEMPHIS has followed me around recently (probably followed lots of us around with the frequency of plays) so I wasn't thrilled when they started it up, but while the 1st jam is still dripping with e-drums they did some impressive things with this version. Keeping consistent with the evening's trend,the boys cultivated a huge peak > Adelay and then treated us to some more 4 on the floor insanity. With MEMPHIS in the rearview, the peaks kept coming and eventually we were wrapping up a (nearly) unflubbed Helix. Bravo. I think we can all agree that any encore which dyslexisizes a song from the previous show > the ending of the night's 2nd set opener is a winner already. The actual transition from Waves jam > Morph jam was quick (a bit forced) but this was gravy time and the crowd at the Town threw down accordingly. Barber brought the house down with a vicious closing solo and the band thundered through Morph's closing notes to rapturous applause... Only suckers miss Buffalo Biscuits.
