Spring Break
Pete Yorn's show at 40 Watt a disappointment
MATT EVANS
Issue date: 11/13/09 Section: Variety
If sweat is a valid indicator of a musician's effort to entertain, then Pete Yorn's show at the 40 Watt was close to being a funeral as the band battled perspiration by remaining coldly stiff.
Accordingly, I dried off from the Tuesday evening tempests rather than working up a sweat enjoying the show.
The set began with the newer song, "Social Development Dance," off of Yorn's most recent solo-release, Back and Forth. Really, everyone in the crowd wanted to hear "Realtor," the popish, fun song from Yorn's 2009 collaboration with Scarlet Johansson, Break Up, as an opener, yet this song was not even on the setlist - a mystery in itself. Alas, this early disappointment only anticipated the rest of the concert.
About 11 songs later and the set ended. Along the way, Yorn performed what was essentially a microcosm of his work since 2001, including songs from all five of his albums to date. Surprisingly, the most frequented album was his first, Musicforthemorningafter, with five songs being played from it. Actually, it was nice that Yorn played his older songs. His first album sounds like the soundtrack to a romance comedy, and the more reserved pop music fit the band's lack of stage presence better than Yorn's later, more alternative music. Truly, Yorn is a better pop, acoustic songwriter than he is an indie, folk artist, and his live show reflected this as, generally, the older the song, the better.
The major problem was that Yorn's more alternative music didn't translate well to a live atmosphere, which requires more emphatic versions of each song, with softer parts played softer and intense parts played more intensely. Each time a song started to crescendo, I started to get excited, anxiously awaiting what I assumed would become a fuller sounding part of the song. Yet every time, a let down. Yorn gained momentum but then suddenly lost it, over and over again.
Yet, the concert wasn't all boring. The most exciting moments of the concert came when Yorn's merch-guy came on stage during several songs to play tambourine. Seriously, the merch-guy deserves his own band, centered around him on tambourine. It was a breath of fresh air when this bearded fellow hopped on stage to excessively rock out on percussion, and he had so much energy and interacted with the crowd so well that, even if just for a few minutes, he made up for the other band members' lack of stage presence.
Though Yorn and company sounded spot-on to the recorded material, they lacked the charisma needed to captive audience members like myself. Inevitably, the concert did not transcend to being more than a lackluster regurgitation of Yorn's recorded material, yielding a volume of perspiration unable to counterbalance my skepticism of Yorn's music prior to coming to the show.
Accordingly, I dried off from the Tuesday evening tempests rather than working up a sweat enjoying the show.
The set began with the newer song, "Social Development Dance," off of Yorn's most recent solo-release, Back and Forth. Really, everyone in the crowd wanted to hear "Realtor," the popish, fun song from Yorn's 2009 collaboration with Scarlet Johansson, Break Up, as an opener, yet this song was not even on the setlist - a mystery in itself. Alas, this early disappointment only anticipated the rest of the concert.
About 11 songs later and the set ended. Along the way, Yorn performed what was essentially a microcosm of his work since 2001, including songs from all five of his albums to date. Surprisingly, the most frequented album was his first, Musicforthemorningafter, with five songs being played from it. Actually, it was nice that Yorn played his older songs. His first album sounds like the soundtrack to a romance comedy, and the more reserved pop music fit the band's lack of stage presence better than Yorn's later, more alternative music. Truly, Yorn is a better pop, acoustic songwriter than he is an indie, folk artist, and his live show reflected this as, generally, the older the song, the better.
The major problem was that Yorn's more alternative music didn't translate well to a live atmosphere, which requires more emphatic versions of each song, with softer parts played softer and intense parts played more intensely. Each time a song started to crescendo, I started to get excited, anxiously awaiting what I assumed would become a fuller sounding part of the song. Yet every time, a let down. Yorn gained momentum but then suddenly lost it, over and over again.
Yet, the concert wasn't all boring. The most exciting moments of the concert came when Yorn's merch-guy came on stage during several songs to play tambourine. Seriously, the merch-guy deserves his own band, centered around him on tambourine. It was a breath of fresh air when this bearded fellow hopped on stage to excessively rock out on percussion, and he had so much energy and interacted with the crowd so well that, even if just for a few minutes, he made up for the other band members' lack of stage presence.
Though Yorn and company sounded spot-on to the recorded material, they lacked the charisma needed to captive audience members like myself. Inevitably, the concert did not transcend to being more than a lackluster regurgitation of Yorn's recorded material, yielding a volume of perspiration unable to counterbalance my skepticism of Yorn's music prior to coming to the show.
