Lemuria / Crumbler / Fallen From the Sky - 6.27.08

Deep Sleep
7:30PM

After a streak where I didn't get to too many shows, I was lucky to catch yet another awesome one for the second Friday night in a row. Early that evening, Heather and I headed out to Old City (where I miraculously found cheap and easy street parking), and got some delicious, albeit costly, ice cream at Franklin Fountain. We wandered around a bit and found ourselves at the show a bit before 7. As expected, a decent amount of people we knew were already there, as this show as shaping up to be an awesome time.

Florida's Fallen From the Sky played first. I think I've managed to catch them about once a summer for the last three years, and they're always strong. They're never a band that completely floors me, but I'm always happy to see them turn in a set. They have a melodic punk sound, not unlike Strike Anywhere, but with heavier vocals. I always find it odd that they went so far in the MTV2 contest thing a few years ago, given that they seem to only draw a handful of kids in Philly and I've never seen them outside of a basement, but they're a good band and nice guys, so I always want them to do well. They played mostly songs from their new full length, Tonight We Radiate, and I really wanted them to play their Beyonce cover (done for the aformenioned MTV2 contest), but no luck. You can, however, hear it on their Myspace page.

One of my favorite hardcore bands that never plays is Crumbler. They pretty much disappeared for a while, and with Klint being on tour a lot, that makes sense, but I was happy to hear that Dirty Weeks was being put out on vinyl and this would be their release show. Before the show, Larry told me that they'd play 13 songs, which I assumed would take about 11 minutes. Well, including some technical difficulties, and a lot of heckling, their set stretched out to a bloated 20 minutes. They played most of the songs from Dirty Weeks, as well as a handful from their demo. I really hope that they keep playing, although I'm sure that's a futile wish. Either way, great band, great dudes, and I try to check em out any time I can.

To futher add to the genre diversity of the show, Lemuria played last. This three piece has pretty much grown into one of my favorite bands in the last few months, and I can safely say that Get Better will be in my top albums of the year at the end. Unfortunately, they didn't play toooo many songs from the LP. They recently released a collection of early material on Asian Man Records, and I can honestly say I haven't listened to much of it at all. They played a lot of these songs live, so I was at a loss for familiarity, but they sounded tight, and faster than they do on record, which is good. The vocals were way low in the mix, but the music was full, especially considering they only have one guitarist. The songs from Get Better that they did play were some of my favorites though: Pants," "Lipstick," "Dog"/"Dogs" (!!) and then closed with "Mechanical" (sans whistling). I was really happy watching their entire set. Great band who deserve the success they've gotten in the last few months, and I can wait to see them again and hear what they have comin out.