music madness: yeasayer, meh say i

My begging paid off and my boyfriend, who has access to those sort of things, hooked me up with two tickets to tonight's Yeasayer show at Turner Hall around 4 this afternoon. Since in one of my money-saving schemes I've forced myself to miss several Rocktober shows, I was quite excited to get a chance to squeeze one in and for free no less.

BF is not really into indie rock that doesn't RAWK, so I diligently tried to find a concert buddy on such short notice. No luck. I putzed around at home (cleaned half my stove--yay) for a few hours and headed down to Turner just before 9, hoping to hit when Yeasayer went on. (Apparently opening band Chairlift is in an iPod commercial, I could live with missing). Unfortunately the band did not go on until 9:29, so in the meantime I discovered twitter is the new smoking. Needless to say I sent several irrelevant texts to it during the wait.

Yeasayer started out strong (or maybe I was just transfixed by their groovy Ikea-inspired lighting scheme), but after awhile I found my mind wandering quite a bit. I definitely like the band (I gave a thorough listen to their recent "All Hour Cymbals" prior to heading down and was reassured), but I am not convinced I liked the band live. Now part of it is that I've been severely spoiled and throughout my twenties have seen some of the most amazing contemporary (and classic) bands there are. But I've always maintained that the one thing that separates a good show from a great show from an AMAZING show is the engagement level the band has with the audience. Yeasayer was about a 2 out of 10 in that category. Yes they played well, yes they have strong songs, yes they're polished--but I got the feeling they were just up there JUST putting on a performance, not creating something.

Glad I went, but I guess a little disappointed. Of course the last show I went to was Spirtualized, so yeah, I am spoiled.

Were you at the show tonight? Your thoughts?