Modest Mouse: Fail.

Now that I'm living in the U street area, I've been hitting up live music like nobodies business.(As is evidenced by my back-to-back evenings at The Black Cat and the 930 Club, respectively). After having seen them nearly five years ago, just after the release of "Good News for People who Love Bad News", I'd been looking forward to last night's Modest Mouse concert for some time and considering the hype surrounding the sold-out show (please see this DCist find from last week), and re-sell ticket prices at nearly triple face value, I was expecting a solid night of cacophonous brass beats. (I personally think it's bad concert-karma to overprice your tickets that much, do undo to others as they say...)
Anyways, doors opened at 8, so we headed over around quarter to ten thinking we'd catch the tail end of the opener and then MM shortly thereafter. Wrong. We show up to a nearly empty 930 Club, catching the end of the first opening act, wait another thirty minutes before being assaulted by a Mexican version of Franz Ferdinand who decided it was a good idea to project awkward and unoriginal video montages onto a screen behind them. I suppose I wouldn't have been so irritated had they just played a few songs, but they took the stage for a solid hour and fifteen. The worst part was probably that the lead singer was crooning into the mike which had a camera mounted on it, that then projected waytoclose images of the sweaty singer's nose onto the screen behind him. I think he thought he was frontin' Menudo. No gracias.

Around Midnight 930 was packed and there was still no sign of the boys. They finally did come on around 12:15, had it been a Saturday night I probably wouldn't have minded as much, but coming off a long work week, then standing around guzzling luke warm Miller Lites (and Guinness in early honor of St Paddy's day) put me in no mood to then deal with the pre-teens attempting to mosh to "City made of Ashes". While the band played a lot of their popular songs and their stage lights were pretty cool, I wasn't even interested enough in their show to stay and hear them do "Float On" for the encore. That might have also been due to the fact that someone evidently had vomited in close proximity to us, and the barman attempted to cover up the smell by spraying it down with catastrophic amounts of disinfectant. (I had to use my pashmina like a burka to keep my nostrils from burning). All I can say is that I hope they improve their stage presence for the remainder of their tour, otherwise, I'd say keep your $50 and listen to them on your ipod en route to work. Much more enjoyable.