Nerds! (Ra Ra Riot and Bear Hands)

Saw Ra Ra Riot at the Bowery last night. The were really good... A bunch of silly nerds playing up tempo post college music. Hailing from Syracuse... sounding like they are from that Montreal scene.. they impressed. The lead singer has a high pitched heart of his sleeve sort of voice. Everyone else looks like band geeks from high school. For some reason I like the nerd bands. They are a six piece, guitar/keyboards, bass, cello, violin, drums and vocals. Play an upbeat sounding high energy light rock.

My favorite thing had to be the Hounds of Love cover they pulled out for an encore.
http://hypem.com/track/368166

They stuck around to play a song they'd played all ready for an encore... which is just kinda lame. If you don't have another song ya kinda have to go.

Openers bear hands (My girlfriend and I both agreed that they needed to change the name Bear Claw... seemed far more appropriate) were really good, provided you did not turn around to see the 4 kids on stage act like rock stars. Particularly pleasant was the Bass player's propensity to cock his head back and spit up fountains of phlegm into the air... which I would imagine made someone uncomfortable. It was kind of funny, cause if I were a kid I would have loved these guys... they just looked so silly to my older eyes.

Lastly this show had a crowd that was very young and very, very ugly... I haven't seen a show this ugly since elf power @ the knitting factory.
Euck. Ugly.