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Week 3 of The Halogens' TT's residency begins for me with Moki. Moki are a basic rock three-piece, whose songs are a bit too simple for my tastes. The vocal melodies are kind of hookless, restricted things, although I do really like the singer's voice. His guitar playing is, again, fine but not that exciting. The drummer tries some interesting things, but gets lost in several of his more challenging fills. They're a likable band, but they just don't grab me.
Amanda Palmer is a favorite of mine. She starts off with a couple of Dresden Dolls songs, which sound weird without the drums. Then we get, believe it or not, her Britney Spears cover. In her hands it becomes a raw, black, evil thing: the line "Hit me, baby, one more time" is pretty disturbing anyway, and here its basic ugliness is laid bare. And she follows that up by covering one of Ad Frank's loveliest songs! Her voice roughens and cracks a bit mid-set, but she seems to clamp down somehow, and soon she's belting away fearlessly and flawlessly. After a couple of newer songs and one more Dolls song, Brian joins her onstage, and she stands up and sings while he accompanies her on guitar. They close with a Neutral Milk Hotel cover of crushing beauty.
The Halogens impress me enormously with their Total Power-Pop Package. Jason is an excellent singer, with a huge range--clear and strong up high, a little growly down low--that he pushes the limits of. Their songs have beautiful, almost majestic melodies, broad dynamic range, and lots of great, intricate little rhythmic flourishes. The lead guitar layers all kinds of spectral weirdness on top of the straightforward rock verses, but it's mixed too low, and I wish a few of the solos were given more time and developed more. The harmony singing is also mixed way too low, but it's good when I can hear it.
Headlining are Mappari, and it's almost a shame to send them up after The Halogens, who are mining a very similar vein and, to my ears, doing a better job of it. Not that they're having any trouble with the audience, the front of which is packed with devoted Mappari fans, dancing and cheering as they recognize favorite songs. They are very good, and do everything solidly; their songs just don't work for me as well. The drummer is part of the problem for me, as he is of the school of "If I play my cymbals faster and smack my snare harder on 3, it rocks more." I tire of this easily. The harmony singing is good, and well-balanced, and the chord progressions have this way of taking an odd left turn in mid-song that I like. And they are fond of the Big Rock Gestures, which I find a little off-putting but their fans eat up. In their last song before the encore, they get the crowd loudly singing along to the oo-ee-oo's, and I'm impressed.
