To paraphrase my friend Sara’s reaction when I asked if she was interested in this show, “Cause Co is a positive, Union Pool is a definite negative”. After Glasslands unfortunate but not at all surprising closing a couple weeks ago, this bill was moved to Union Pool. Despite the fact that U.P. is always crowded with general unpleasantness, shows in the backroom are, with some regularity, pretty rad. The room is small but never seems to get overly hot, and there’s a bar inside, and the sound could be much, much worse. So, despite my general distaste for Union Pool, I had no excuse to not go see this bill.
I have never seen Cause Co-Motion! play a set longer than 15 or 20 minutes, which makes sense because their songs are each about a minute and a half long, tops. But those 15 or 20 minutes are inevitably jam packed with some of the most ebullient fun in Brooklyn indie rock. This set was no different. They launched into the first dollop-sized song with characteristic energy. If the bouncing hook-laden guitars weren’t enough to get the crowd moving, the vigorous and constant jump-kick dancing of bassist Liam should’ve done the trick. Blame it on Union Pool, but Brooklyn wasn’t budging. Still, Cause-Co has an incredibly loyal base of friends and fans that come to every show, who were interspersped throughout the crowd dancing and flailing and egging everyone else on with their own palpable vivacity.
Cause Co-Motion! and 1990s on the same bill was a stroke of genius. Both bands are so eminently danceable and kinetic, despite 15-year age difference and dissimilar styles. This, the third time I’ve seen the 1990s live (and the second time at Union Pool) reaffirmed my certainty that they are one of the best live rock bands playing today. Lead singer and guitarist Jackie McKeown is charming in the extreme, although stage banter is minimal. Meanwhile, Michael McGaughrin’s drumsticks seem to be (furiously) moving independently of him, slave-driving his arms to the snapping point. When I saw them at Bowery in the spring, they ran out of whiskey part way through and (gently and facetiously) expressed their displeasure to the crowd. At this show, Jackie held up a water glass part way through and informed us it had been filled with whiskey. Twice. And then complimented us New Yorkers on our whiskey drinking choices. We in the crowd reacted with mixed enthusiasm and pride.
My only complaint about this show was the strange crowd the 1990s attracted. In addition to a serious music industry presence, the heavy blog attention these guys have been attracting lately meant there were a lot of, well, bloggers, in the crowd. I don’t mean to disparage bloggers here, but I will comment that there were a lot of dudes and their girlfriends that looked like perhaps they hadn’t been out of the house much lately. Despite the rather disquieting visage that a life spent in front of a computer screen lent to the blogtastic show go-ers, they were enthusiastic if nothing else. “Supposed To Be My Friend” was the definite hit of the evening, with some bizarrely out-of-place head banging and a large portion of the crowd singing along.
When an encore was demanded, the 1990s appeared simultaneously shocked, confused and flattered, commenting that they “didn’t really know how to do [it]”. But they pulled through. Then, perhaps predictably, they invited us to all get drunk (or maybe insisted that it be so). Given their experience with the activity, I certainly wasn’t going to argue with them.
