Catherine beat me to a full review, but I feel like disgorging my impressions anyway. In short, nobody came to the Black Cat last night with the sort of professional attitude necessary for a night of efficient rocking -- not the band, not the venue staff and not the crowd. Half-assing your defined concert duties might provide a less tense evening, but it doesn't make for a very compelling musical experience.

Army of Me's Vince Scheuerman did manage to secure DC's coveted number two androgenous male rockstar slot, right being WSC's Martin Royle. But AoM didn't take their status as openers seriously enough: when you're the second of three bands, you need to play a shortened set. Their Interpolish antics at times seemed interminable -- seriously guys, multiple guitar solos? Still, on the whole they were fairly pleasant.

The same couldn't be said of the sound -- there was something wrong with the bass clipping, and the mics for the backup vocals weren't on at all. These problems seemed to be fixed by the time the Wrens came on, but count the evening as another example of the Black Cat technicians not taking their jobs very seriously.

They weren't the only ones who failed to play their part. The sold-out crowd, swollen with Friday's Express readers, provided a constant buzz from the back of the room. The Wrens' live arrangements rely heavily on a whisper-quiet-intro-and-first-verse-to-rocking-chorus dynamic. A little cliched, I guess, but I still dig it -- unfortunately it's hard to pull off "elegiac" when some dipshit is screaming into his cellphone that YEAH, THEY'RE JUST AIGHT.

Also not helping: some apparent Wren peergroup members. A nuclear family trundled through the crowd, its middleaged matron shouting "WE WORSHIP YOU!" and other my-friend's-in-a-band!-isms. Lady, look, I'm glad to see you out at the show and I know this'll make a cute story at the PTA potluck. But that shit belongs at the Grog -- and even then you're going to need about eight more Bud Ices under your belt to be credible. This is a sold-out show at the second biggest rock club in what I have been assured is a perfectly nice city, if you like that sort of thing. Those poor old men on stage have driven all the way down 95 just to rock for us. Don't embarass them.

On to the Wrens themselves. To be honest, I was expecting a tighter performance from a band that's been playing together for fifteen years. Writing this now, the checklist seems more impressive than it was in aggregate: the arrangements were frequently interesting, particularly a glitch-rock version of The House That Guilt Built; Kevin Whelan injected enough energy to buoy the entire band; and everyone on stage was an impressive instrumentalist.

But as I mentioned, the arrangements didn't match well with the less-than-reverential crowd; they stuck almost exclusively to material from The Meadowlands; the transitions were slow and jammy; and the harmonies didn't gel as well as they could have, particularly Greg Whelan's (although I'm prepared to blame this on the BC sound crew as well -- maybe his monitor was too quiet). Most galling was the band's complete inability to control the energy of the crowd -- the pauses between songs were too long, and the main set was abruptly concluded, seemingly on a whim, after a downtempo number. Combined with a short and lackluster encore, a show that started strong left me scratching my head. It just felt off.

Exactly what it was struck me on the way home: these guys were all talented musicians, but they just didn't seem to play like a cohesive rock band. Instead the performance felt a little like that of a talented tribute band with unusually good taste in material. How often do Wrens practices happen, I wonder?

All in all, I'm glad to have gone to the show -- I've been wanting to see the Wrens for a long time, and it's nice at least to check them off the list. But the performance itself left me cold. It's strange to watch a song performed by its authors and feel like they connect to it less than you do.

the wrens. black cat. 2/11/05. this is going to be long and pointless, so you've been warned.

we started off the night by meeting my brother and his friend zach at dc9 and getting a couple of drinks. they were duly impressed by the bar and i once again felt like Hip Older Sister instead of Irrelevant 25 Year-Old Who is So Out of The Loop. by the time we got over to the black cat, around 10:15 or so, the line stretched down the block and we heard that the show had already sold out.

we got inside in time to hear three or four songs from a brooklyn band called the upwelling (who carl had been pimping), and they were surprisingly pleasant. a little U2ish, a little bombastic, not incredibly catchy and powerful but nice for a first opener. a LOT of screaming fangirls. apparently they are heartthrobbish. (and my brother liked their music enough to buy their cd). the second opener was local group army of me, by whom i was also pleasantly surprised. they had three or four distinctly good songs that came off as kind of interpolish. the rest of their stuff more or less blended together for me, but they at least had a charismatic lead singer, so it wasn't a totally boring performance. but they played way too long, at least ten songs, which came off to me as due to arrogance and an overestimation of how much the crowd was enjoying their show. you weren't that awesome, buddies.

around midnight the wrens finally came on. to be honest, i had no idea what to expect from their live performance. on one hand, i was kind of prepping myself to be disappointed, because they are like 50 years old, and maybe they would be geriatric, and sitting in wheelchairs, and playing guitars with their dentures or something. i also tried to lower my expectations because i just love the meadowlands to death, and i figured there was no way a live rendering of those songs could please me. on the other hand, i had heard good things about their concerts, and as tommy pointed out, they have been together for like 15 years, and a band who's been in existence that long probably can play pretty tight.

but overall, my reaction to the show was somewhere in between ecstasy and indifference. the concert started off really promising, with the guitarist and bassist noodling around, tweaking some knobs and making all sorts of crazy spacey sounds; it sounded more like the start of a radiohead show than anything i had heard from the wrens before. but it eventually built up into an amazing version of "this boy's exhausted", with bassist and one of the vocalists kevin whalen leaping around up on amps and screaming like he was 16 again. really, i was amazed at the level of energy throughout the entire show. i couldn't tell if it was sincere or not - like, were they just rocking this hard just to prove that they are not old fuddy duddies, or did they really feel it? did i care? not really. it was fun to watch.

the first half of the set was generally pretty exhilarating. if you've never listened to the wrens before, they have this way with a lot of their songs where they start off totally quiet and intense and restrained and build up into pure pop rock awesomeness and all of a sudden you're jumping up and down and screaming along and have just slammed the person next to you with an elbow to the face. those parts of the concert were just a lot of pure joy, which is interesting because the lyrics of all these songs are so fucking depressing. but you could tell the band was really feeling it - i definitely got the sense that they were just awed that they were playing a sold-out show, maybe grateful. anyway, during the first half of the peformance, i was about to explode out of my head with joy and music love and everything good and pure in the universe. it was lovely.

unfortunately, the later part of the show sucked donkey balls, due both to the band's performance and several factors beyond their control. these external circumstances included, surprise surprise, the SHITZEN sound at the black cat. everything was fuzzy, vocals were muddled, blah blah blah. who the fuck is running the sound there? let's kill him?

the crowd also played a part in affecting the show negatively. like i said, the show was sold out and packed. i like to think this is due to the fact that i pushed it so hard on DCist and DCist is such a bastion of TOTAL HIPNESS and trendsetting that everybody read about the band and became my army of music clones and decided to come out. hmm. probably not. however, the washington post's express had written a piece on the band on thursday, thus most likely ensuring the total awfulness of the crowd. gah. several thousand exurban yuppies probably read about the band on their metro commute, decided it would be cool to check out the show, and naturally, when they got there, couldn't be bothered to play a lick of attention to the actual music because they'd never once listened to a wrens' record and didn't in fact care about watching the performance. this resulted in so much crowd chatter over the softer parts of the wrens' songs that you often couldn't even hear the vocals. several times, you actually had people throughout the crowd yelling at everyone to shut up. normally i would find this nannyish and annoying, but really - if you're going to come to a show and not even fake listening to the band, go the fuck downstairs to the red room and leave the fans alone, assholes. so this was a rare instance in which i think the concert would have been much better if there were about half the people there, because then you know they were just coming out because they really like and know the band.

however. the wrens themselves honestly had a lot to do with the fact that the show lost all momentum come the second half. their setlist seemed off, they were playing around a lot with feedback and knob-twiddling instead of the insane rocking that i expected, they took way too much time in between songs, and really, i just got the feeling that they were being utterly self-indulgent. i suppose i can't blame them too much for that - it's not that often that you achieve indie god status only after 15 years of being together and going through label hell - but still, you owe it to the fans to play straight up music and not fuck around too much with lame reinterpretations and weird vocal stylings.

ah well. even though the show wasn't as mind-blowing as i had hoped, it still felt nice to see the wrens up there having a great time and playing to a full house, because god knows that if any band deserves it, they do. i just hope that next time i see them, they're more concerned about pleasing the audience instead of themselves.