Stars of the Lid - Lakeshore Theater, Chicago, 4/26/08

I was really looking forward to this show so it pains me to come out of it with a negative opinion. Doubly painful since, according to one of the two members of the duo who served as indie-mumblicious emcee, they hadn't played Chicago in six years and his family (including his grandmother who had never seen him play!) was in the audience.

The place was packed. The two official guys in SotL played across from each other at opposite ends of the stage, with a string trio in the middle. One guy was on tabletop electronics and the other moved between that and guitar atmospheres. Lighting was provided by a video projection, not unlike many an Actually Records show I've attended.

They started around 11 and I drifted into sleep within ten minutes. After a bit of a nap I stayed up through the rest of the show and the encore. It was truly odd, that despite the material from their new album And Their Refinement Of The Decline having elements of melody (and other live instruments, such as trumpet), these were almost entirely forsaken for drone and the trio doing whole-note chord progressions. There was a lot less timbral variety as well - it more or less sounded like real strings playing on top of synthesized strings. I was perplexed that even the brief glimpses of melody that punctuate the otherwise monolithic drones were nowhere to be found, leaving the SotL live experience with dark shadows of faces, lights on music stands, and an Impressionist painting of a video as backdrop. If the aim was to engulf us in meticulous texture, the venue might have let the sonics down a bit, as parts of the roof rattled when the bass swelled and made me think of subs in a tricked-out car stereo.

I did like how the talking guy ended the encore song with a "Good" to himself before saying "Good night."