NXNE 2007: Day 4

In order to squeeze every last drip of life from our NXNE badges, we headed on down to Lee's Palace on Sunday night to check out one of my all-time faves, Fountains of Wayne. As I've acknowledged before, many people slag them for silly pop hits like "Stacy's Mom" but the fact is that if you dig a little deeper into their catalogue, you'll find that they've released some of the greatest and wittiest songs of the last 10 years. They showcased a large majority of them last night, including some lesser known ones like "Red Dragon Tattoo" and "No Better Place." I loved that when it came time to play the inevitable aforementioned hit song, they chose to play a completely stripped down acoustic version of the tune. I also really enjoyed that at least half of their set was comprised of songs from their stellar 1996 debut. Sure, there were noteworthy songs missing from the set ("Denise" and "Valley Winter Song") but overall this was a very enjoyable show and a great way to end a weekend of rampant concert going.

Fountains of Wayne on myspace / Download: Denise mp3
Check out my pics of the show on flickr.

A pleasant surprise for me was the fact that, opening for FoW was California's The Broken West, who's "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" CD is amongst my favourite releases of the year. Their recorded sound reminds me of Teenage Fanclub or Big Star, but live they bring me back to Wilco's heyday, perhaps around the time of "Summerteeth." Their set seemed particularly short to me, but what they did play sounded great and I wouldn't be surprised if we see them headlining their own show next time around.

The Broken West on myspace / Download: On The Bubble mp3
Check out my pics from the show on flickr.

And so ends this year's NXNE festival and I'm amazed at the amount of shows I was able to catch this time around. It wiped me out mentally but I had a lot of fun. The next few weeks of my life are going to be very busy and I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be able to do but hopefully I'll still be able to post something every week. the next show that I'm really going to try to be at is They Might Be Giants on July 23rd at The Mod Club.