Review #202: Elf Power live
I went to this show to celebrate my birthday. While I really loved their first album and favorably reviewed their last one, for some reason I wasn’t expecting much. I think it was because I wasn’t impressed with the few songs I heard by the opening bands, Patience Please and Lillydale, as well as some lukewarm feelings toward other Elf Power songs and/or albums. I also thought that if I set low expectations, I would be pleasantly suprised (hey, I’m a pessimist). My plan worked, as all three bands sounded great, just proving that live music is still where it’s at.
Elf Power played songs from throughout their catalogue, including Temporary Arm and Let the Serpent Sleep. Naturally they played songs off the new album, but not Old Familiar Scene, which I thought would be a crowd pleaser. They even graced with an encore, playing a song that Jake identified as being by T-Rex.
There is a certain distinguishable guitar sound Elf Power has that I have become familiar with. Not being a musician or anything I’m not familiar enough with it to tell exactly what it is, but hearing it live was like visiting an old friend. There were times that I just let the music take me over and I even danced a little, partly out of spite for the popular concept of not dancing at rock shows, and partly because latley booze+good music makes me dance. And yes, I look stupid.
Next time Elf Power is in town I am definitley going to see them. I only hope they play some of my favorite songs, All You Experiments, about aliens, and High Atop the Silver Brances, about swimming and flying.