The Smog Show

Oh, Smog. Why do I love you so? The moroseness? The spaciness? The frequent references to horses and the country? Waiting through chord progressions to hear the end of the sentence?

The first time I saw Smog, he was an angry man, hating the crowd. At the end of the set, he leaned into the mike to say "Go Home" and then stalked offstage, despite the earnest appreciation of the crowd. Oh Vancouver indie rockers and their clear-cut cultural norms of what you do and do not do at shows.

The second time I saw Bill Calahan, he was downright chipper, making jokes about the ATM that was right next to the stage and most significantly, making prolonged eye contact with individual audience members (including, at one shocking point, me) and content with the rapt reverence of the people listening. Because really, Smog is all about listening and people who are not listening closely miss it. I think this is why he sings such slow, drawn-out lyrics of such........




........undulating beauty.

Last night we saw Smog at Spaceland in Silverlake. I don't like LA indie kids all that much. Too exuberant or something. I'm used to Canadian indie kids who are clinically depressed (it's a big part of the national identity, that) and somber with small pockets of potential happiness secreted about their persons.

So anyway, I don't think Bill likes LA very much, which is fine because, between you and me and the fencepost, there's a lot to hate. He played all new stuff and then four good ol' songs. In that order. Kind of rude, perhaps, but we let the artist have his way. At one point he said, "we're getting ready to record an album, so we're practicing." Some of the new songs are pretty killer. In particular, the song about the well and the song about the country (of course) and a song about "show me the colts". The bassist looked like Shelley Duvall and was a weird and captivating limp noodle with a beat throughout. The drummer had been salvaged from the galley of a 18th century mercantile ship and looked like Dean Paul Gibson. He played the drums with a loosey goosey flair and looked like he would have preferred to play standing up so he could dance properly.

The most significant moment of the evening was when Bill said, "This is an eight show tour... ...and you're the best audience so far." Then he started to say something else, which I'm pretty sure was, "And we've got seven more shows after this." But he was drowned out by self-congratulatory cheering. Which was perfect.

Whatever. I think the man gets a lot of fuel out of being misunderstood. Also, he was sporting a pale fifteen-year-old's moustache.