I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 31, 2023] Crooks and Nannies

This was my third time seeing Japanese Breakfast.  It was a Halloween show!  And her last show for at least a year.  So I grabbed tickets.

Hop Along was supposed to open. Hop Along is a band that I wish I liked more.   I like their music but there’s something about their songs that just doesn’t work for me.  I think it’s got something to do with the vocals, but again, I don’t really know.

But I was looking forward to seeing them live to see if they could win me over.  And then they were not playing the show and it on their place was Crooks and Nannies, a Philly band that I hadn’t heard of.

Crooks and Nannies is more or less a duo: Max Rafter and Sam Huntington.  For this show (and a tour opening for Lucy Dacus (!)), they were a five-piece.  I am pretty certain that Lucy’s own Jacob Blizard was playing with them on guitar.

Since it was Halloween, it was an opportunity for the band to dress up.  Amusingly, because of the lighting in the first two songs, I didn’t realize that guitarist/singer Saxophonist Max was wearing green face makeup to look like Frankenstein’s monster.  I did  wonder why they were dressed that way–the makeup definitely completed the picture.

Their bassist, Ryan Ficano was wearing a cow costume.  Ficano is also in a fascinatingly off kilter metal(ish) band called Ogre.  Their keyboard player, who I think was Addy Watkins, was wearing a fringed cowboy outfit.

But it was drummer/singer Sam who really impressed with a full on Carrie–a dress covered in tons of blood.  Sam later remarked that stage blood never really dries, so this must have been what Carrie felt like when she front her band after the prom.

Blizard (if that was him) wore a Santa hat (and no other nod to costumery).

I had listened to one song before the show and wasn’t that impressed–it was slow and kind of empty.  I assumed the show would be slow and maybe a little tedious.  I had NO IDEA what we were in for.

My wife hated them, but I was intrigued immediately because they played so much noise!

The show started and the band roared out–the guitars (Blizard) were skronking, the keys were noisy and the drums were cacophonous.  And then “N95” settled down to a more conventional melody with Sam singing her personal lyrics.

The band is a total mystery.

It also turns out that they put out a couple of records in the early 2010s and then took five years off and when they reunited their sound had morphed–their earlier stuff is poppier, more sweet.  But five years apart and lots of Events in their lives have changed them.

I found that I liked Sam’s vocals a lot more.  But I have also learned that Max has been taken hormone therapy and so his voice is much deeper than it was on the record.

So when Max sang “Control” it was … different, but only slightly.  There were lots of ripping guitar sounds on this one, too.

“Sorry” starts out quietly with Sam singing a great lyric like “if I was rich I’d try in patient therapy.”  “Cold Hands” started the same way–with just drums and Sam’s vocals.  But then things really took off with loud guitars and bass.

i didn’t really like “No Fun” because it was one of a few songs that Max sang where the same simple words were repeated a lot (I”m no fun, I’m no fun”) although when I steamed the song just now I found I liked it a lot more–maybe the vocals were too loud live?

For “Weather” Sam came out from behind the drums (and Max played them) to sing to the audience.  About half way through the song, Sam (who had earlier said she wanted to scream a lot tonight), switched to a deep death-metal vocal to growl the final verses.  She also climbed off the stage and did something with the folks in the front row.

Now t hat I’m pretty sure it was Jacob Blizard on lead guitar I can hear the kind of weird noises things he throws into songs, like the fuzzy, almost out of tunes notes on “Big Mouth Bass.”

It seemed like there were a lot of people in the crowd to see them (I saw many happy comments when they were announced as the new opener).  So when they got to the final song 2016’s “Carry Me” and asked people to sing along, there were certainly people who did.  This song sounded very different from the other ones–a little sillier, a little poppier.  Although Max played a sax solo and in alternating moments they jammed a melody and then played a line of utter noise.

It was clear that everyone was having a good time on stage.  And I appreciated that too.  When we left for the show I said I didn’t care if we missed them, and now I’m so glad we saw them.  And I’m curious to see what they do next.

N95 ®
Control Ø
Sorry Ø
Cold Hands ®
No Fun Ø
Weather ®
Big Mouth Bass ®
Carry Me ∀

® Real Life (2023)
Ø No Fun EP (2023)
∀ Ugly Laugh (2016)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SETLIST August 7 2021

1. Paprika ♥1
2. Be Sweet ♥2
3. Kokomo, IN ♥3
4. Slide Tackle ♥4
5. Posing in Bondage ♥5
6. Savage Good Boy ♥7
7. Tactics ♥9
8. In Heaven ¶
9. The Woman That Loves You ¶
10. Road Head §
11. Ballad 0 (Bumper cover)
12. Boyish (Little Big League song) §
13. The Body Is a Blade §
14. Everybody Wants to Love You ¶
    Encore:
15. Posing for Cars ♥10
16. Diving Woman §

♥ = Jubilee [did not play “Sit” or “In Hell”]
¶ = Psychopomp
§ = Soft Sounds from Another Planet

Likely set list June 3, 2018

1. In Heaven
2. The Woman That Loves You
3. Machinist
4. Road Head
5. Heft
6. 2042
7. 12 Steps
8. Rugged Country
9. Boyish (Little Big League Song)
10. The Body Is a Blade
11. Till Death
12. This House
13. Triple 7
14. Diving Woman
15. Everybody Wants to Love You
16. Dreams (Cranberries cover)