Aug 15 2008 12:10 pm,
The Dodos
100 Club,
12/08/08
Noodling is back. Forget three-chord punk bands with their airwaves all clogged up with tobacco, kicking the shit out of amps and pissing on the front row. No, no. Cardigans are where it’s at. As The Dodos, San Francisco’s noodliest duo, enter the fourth minute of their barnstorming single ‘Fools’, the 100 Club turns from anarchic mob venue of yore to a sort of underground Woodstock. A bristly sea of beard nods and sways as drummer Logan Kroeber generates the sort of skin-smacking flurry of fists normally reserved for the VIP area at Summercase Festival.
‘Joe’s Waltz’ sees yet more frantic drum patterns, whilst singer/guitarist Meric emerges through the cacophonous swell with his tenderly-plucked guitar like a newly-anointed Elliott Smith.
A two-piece, plus glockenspieler, really shouldn’t be able to hold your attention through this kind of stuttering, ambient setlist, that drifts from a psychedelic, pre-pubescent Micah P. Hinson, through to the rattling folk-grunge growls of Blitzen Trapper.
The beards demand an encore, and they get one. Tonight, we’re on their side.
JJ Dunning
