Half an hour to showtime, an unassuming redhead stepped to the front of the stage, drawing scattered cheers.
“Ooohhh, hooray for the sound crew,” deadpanned the girl beside me, not recognizing-like most of the audience-Carl Newman, lead singer of the New Pornographers. He’d clearly decided even though it was early, his band was ready to go.
The setup was simple for the night’s opening act-all musicians, including drummer Kurt Dahle, were set up right across the front of the stage. This positioning worked wonders for the band, which boasts an indie-rock all-star lineup, and the idea that the Pornographers are a groove collective was made palatable by their egalitarian dispersement.
The Pornographers kicked the night off with “Use It,” the first single from their latest effort, the ’70s-nostalgic and aggressive Twin Cinema, and then burned through two more energetic numbers before Newman finally provided the audience with some explanation for the group’s efficient pace: “I’m starstruck. We saw Stuart Murdoch backstage and it sudenly hit me. We’re playing with effing Belle and Sebastian! Anyway, this one’s called ‘Mass Romantic,'” he said, cuing Neko Case’s touring replacement (not to mention his niece) Kathryn Calder to start their first-ever single. The group finished their set the way they started it, with another single from their new album-this time the visceral “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” and after a quick goodbye, were off the stage.
The energetic high note provided by the upstart Vancouverites stood in stark contrast to the apparently jet-lagged Scottish septet Belle and Sebastian, who began their set with “Stars of Track and Field,” and did not attempt an upbeat song until “The Blues are Still Blue,” three numbers in.
Their set was mostly enjoyable, with the band members doing what Scottish musicians do best: charming a foreign audience with their accents. But there was a sense of disappointment as well-The Life Pursuit, B&S’s new album, is a dirgy yet danceable record in the Supertramp mold, yet the band chose to play many older tracks from their 1996 major-label debut If You’re Feeling Sinister. These songs, quietly gorgeous and touching in the right setting, served only to disrupt the mood set by great beat-driven tunes like “White Collar Boy” and “I’m a Cuckoo,” not to mention the New Pornographers’ set before them.
For the show’s duration, Murdoch never quite seemed comfortable-several times he quipped impishly to the audience, “It’s okay to dance, you know-we won’t be offended,” in his twee Glaswegian drawl, and then twice forgetting the lyrics to his own songs. On the audience’s behalf, this reviewer would like to assert that we would have loved to dance-had the Docks not oversold their venue way past capacity to dangerous levels, thereby making getting one’s groove on an impossibility.
All in all, this concise concert was worth the price of admission-even at scalper levels-despite the headliners being thoroughly upstaged by their compelling opening act.
