Live: The Jealous Sound @ Knitting Factory 2.15.12

photo used with the kind permission of courtney sultan

The news that there would be a new Jealous Sound record was met with cautious enthusiasm at JS-NYC and I'm pleased to report the resulting new A Gentle Reminder is pretty aces. The are on the road behind it currently. The last two times they came through town were pretty ok shows. I passed on the Sunny Day cash-in tour four or five years ago, opting for their off-night show at Southpaw, and was pretty impressed with the set. The room was full-ish, but far from sold out and the general take from the band was that they were surprised that people still cared about them.

I rolled up to the Knit bummed that I missed Daytrader, but hoping against hope that I was going to miss as much of the Motion City Soundtrack side-project dungheap in the feature slot as auricularly possible. I succeeded in my surgical strike, but the small victory of my timely arrival was compromised slightly by entering the room to find it packed cheek to fucking jowl with vastly more kids than I would have expected. The Jealous Sound came on a little past 10 and romped through an interesting set you can peruse via the stolen photo at top left. There have been rumblings that Pedro was not on the tour and the lack of talk as to why is a bit of an eyebrow raiser. Josh from The New Trust reprised his touring bass role. Drummer guy is both good and new, and I assume played on the record, but the set came off as a little bit more 'a bunch of guys playing Jealous Sound tunes' rather than a band called The Jealous Sound. Shehan is an oddly charismatic frontman, and in pretty good voice. The crowd seemed well into it, cheering loudly despite some interesting omissions from the set list. Many seemed young enough that this very well could have been the first time they had seen LA's finest, but the evening didn't go without enough (unheeded) requests for Knapsack tunes to assert that some of the massive had been into Shehen for a bit. I'd give it a 6.5 on a 10 scale. Not bad, but not band-y either. No stupid pits, at least.

Judging by the draw, I'd say we'll see the gents in town again soon. Sadly, I bet it will be opening for some horror show of a douche-punk extravaganza, so act now and see The Jealous Sound in the small rooms while you can. Keep track of their whereabouts and buy a copy of the pretty damn aces new A Gentle Reminder here.


R