Boy are the good folks at this Beer Garden in Astoria. And who is to blame them. It is five o'clock on a pleasant Autumn afternoon and they have been playing at the 19th Annual Beer Olympics since noon. Hula-hoops are being hula'd, beer is bing thrown, new friends are getting closer, college buddies are singing football songs and… even Real Estate are enjoying themselves.
There is a guitarist chowing down on the outside Hall (I know, I know) pubgrub, and there is a drummer tokeing on a pipe, and everywhere is friends and family huggging and scrambling and knocking back beer.
Everybody happy happy.
Except me.
I arrive at 345p for a 4p and I have to be in the city by 7p and everybody is busy NOT PLAYING a concert by the popular indie band and what that means is… I just wasted my afternoon.
It is 530p before the band hits the stage and up close the speakers are too fucking loud and at the back the remnants of P;umpic Fest and locals having dinner make it impossible to hear a damn thing.
Which doesn't fucking matter because three songs in I have to hit the damn road.
The New Jersey quintet are a bland but not vanilla bland lo-fi indie folk-rock band, the melodies are there and sharp, but they need to be heard. This is a crap venue for them. And it is hard to assess how good they might be (the last time I saw em, summer of 2010, I quite licked them). Their third, my last, song of the afternoon , was their current single "It's Real". and it is better live, with the insanely catchy cchorus a pleasure even as it it drifts into the ether.
Outside the Hall, the sound is actually immaculate. Fat lot of good it does me.