Songs About The Weekend

Maxi Geil! & Playcolt @ Tonic 2/3/2007
Cryin’ / Teenage Extreme / You Can’t Kill Us, Man, We’re Already Dead / Sunday Morning / Your Best Won’t Be Enough / Makin’ Love in the Sunshine / That’s How The Story Goes / The Love I Lose / Please Remember Me / Strange Sensation // Artist’s Lament

Maxi Geil! & Playcolt “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine (Album Version)” – The band played this show with a trio of girls from NYU called the Maxi Dancers, who performed an awkward but highly appropriate jailbait burlesque act throughout the set, starting off with some over the top vamping to the Skinemax guitar licks of “Cryin'” and a glam schoolgirl striptease for “Teenage Extreme.” By the time they came around to the extended dance version “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine,” the room exploded into a fantastic dance party for artsy New Yorkers of three different generations. It was a pure, perfect concert moment in which the audience became an equal part of the performance, and the song became complete. Later on, after an enthusiastic call for an encore, “Artist’s Lament” came close to matching the magic of “Makin’ Love,” with its angst-ridden chorus “Oh Christ, do you know what it’s like / to be long on ideas / but short on time?” becoming the anthem that it deserves to be before hitting its climax and ending as a sort of slow dance at a prom. It drives me mad that this band can consistently pack venues in New York City and put on these lively, thoughtful spectacles without attracting the attention of too many people outside of the art world, but trust me, if you’re sleeping on this, it’s your loss. (Click here for the Maxi Geil website.)

David Vandervelde “Nothin’ No” – “Nothin’ No,” as in “nothin’, no, is gonna keep us apart.” Which is, of course, something you only say when every goddamn thing in the world is going to get in the way of the thing you want, and the only way to keep sane and focused and possibly overcome your obstacles is to persevere with relentless, stupid optimism and fidelity. The entire song sounds as though it is cheerfully swimming against the tide of bad odds and negativity, and it’s just sort of ridiculous and inspiring. I really hope that things worked out for this dude. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: Chris Conroy on comic books, Anthony Miccio on the twenty albums that he kept in their entirety from 2006, Funeral Pudding begins the game of Of Montreal, and Ed Shepp recites a post from the Cold Inclusive.