Well I’m back as well. My weeklong vacay wasn’t nearly as extensive as Scott’s, but it did include two killer Archers of Loaf shows, a roundtrip car ride to Ohio, and a mini-keg of Hopslam. I’m putting together a much longer, wordier, and probably unnecessary post/review/thing about the AoL gigs but until then, let’s just say they blew me away. So much so in fact that I may go as far as proclaiming that I enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed Pavement last summer… maybe… but that’s the topic of another post. There was just something about the Saturday night show that stuck out in my mind. They opened with high-energy versions of “Audiowhore” and “Harnessed In Slums” that had the entire crowd screaming along and head-banging two minutes in and then ended the first set with the classic “Web In Front” and perhaps my favorite cuts of the night, “What Did You Expect?” and “Nostalgia”. That and between Matt Gentling’s non-voice (he’d almost completely lost it the night before), Eric Bachman taking pictures of the crowd before the show, and their amused reaction to a fan jumping on stage and dancing drunkenly during the closer “Bacteria”, I couldn’t help but feel happy for these guys. Sure, Bachman sounded better than ever and they played all the “hits”, but you just got the sense that the entire band was genuinely grateful to be playing shows again and were really feeding off the energy of the crowd, which was 10x louder than it sounds on the recordings above. Needless to say, it was a much deserved reception for a band as incredible as AoL.

Anyway, check out nyctaper.com for a recording of Saturday night’s show, which includes the tracks above and an amazing 7+ minute version of “Bacteria”.