I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 22, 2018] Belle Game

I hadn’t heard of Belle Game before this show.  The blurb on the ticket site described them as “crush pop” which was new to me.

Since they were opening for Johnny Marr I thought I had a feeling for what they wound sound like.

I arrived at the club moments before they went on (nice timing), but far enough back that I couldn’t see anyone very well (wish I’d gotten there ten minutes earlier).  The music started and it was this ethereal soft sound–lots of synths and even the guitar was dreamy and almost unrecognizable. And then singer Andrea Lo started singing.

Lo has an amazing voice. Very powerful–she can hit the rafters easily. She also sings with a lot of force (that hand waving to the beat that pop singers do).  Basically, she was like a TV singer.  And it absolutely did not work with the music.

It may have been me.  I was certainly bummed that I couldn’t see very well and I was marveling at the seven or eight men who were all well over six-foot around me.  The lighting was also pretty terrible (hence the crappy pictures). But I just could not get into this band.  The guitars were never guitary enough.  The drums were just sort of there.  It was all keyboards, but mostly playing chords, nothing special.  It felt very generic.  The song titles didn’t help: Spirit,” “Shine” “Low” “High” “Yuh” (this last one is especially peculiar).

Interestingly this video presents a band that was rocking really hard. Somehow my experience of the band was very different (The phone must have compressed the sound or something).  Perhaps I just had the wrong attitude, because this video also sounds pretty decent (I like the drums).

The band members were super nice.  The keyboardist said some nice things about Johnny Marr and his crew and they were all about everyone being in a good space.  They hung out after he show selling heir own merch although the TLA merch table is always a mob scene, so I didn’t say anything to them.