TSOOL Live Reviews -- TSOOL - The Soundtrack of Our Lives

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Subject: TSOOL Live Reviews

Author:
Oatmealgrizzly

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Date Posted: 22:52:23 01/02/03 Thu
In reply to: Oatmealgrizzly 's message, "TSOOL Live Reviews" on 22:32:00 01/02/03 Thu

http://www.popmatters.com/music/concerts/s/soundtrack-of-our-lives-021103.shtml

THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES
3 November 2002: Bowery Ballroom � New York

by Dfactor
PopMatters Music Critic

S E T L I S T
Broken Imaginary Time
Infra Riot
Mind the Gap
Still Aging
The Flood
Tonight
Instant Repeater '99
Nevermore
Sister Surround
21st Century Ripoff
ENCORE
Veins
Galaxy
Dow Jones

What a great night! Capping a long CMJ Marathon weekend, the Soundtrack of Our Lives played a brilliant set at the Bowery Ballroom. And the presence of well-known rock faces like the Hives' Pelle Almqvist, Joe Strummer and Ken Stringfellow in the club helped make it a more-than-memorable rock night out.

This is the year for the Soundtrack of Our Lives. Immediately upon the February 2002 UK release of their great new CD, Behind the Music, the buzz on the band has been incredible, with fans and reviewers comparing the band's songwriting to the Beatles/Stones/Who pantheon and its tight energetic live shows to the best of Guided by Voices' shows. And with Universal re-releasing TSOOL's latest offering Behind the Music, the audience for this great Swedish band continues to build. Rock and roll the way it was meant to sound.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives is not a stranger to New York or the Bowery Ballroom, having played New York a few times since the spring. Tonight, they opened somewhat quietly with bassist Karl Gustafsson's moody, introspective "Broken Imaginary Time" from Behind The Music. Its repeated refrain of "You're such a lightweight after all" provided a muted, haunting opening to the highly anticipated set.

TSOOL then plunged headlong into "Infra Riot", the supercharged riff-a-rama that opens up the band's new CD. So welcome to the other side! This song rocks so hard with such melodic, cool flair that it should be played this whole upcoming holiday season on every single FM rock radio station.

TSOOL's lead vocalist and band mastermind is Ebbot Lundberg, who, according to the new Universal web site, is "your everyday hippie Viking punk songwriter genius, and also a true entertainer." His vocals are great on the CD, but on this night, his voice seemed a bit tired, perhaps wiped out from a l-o-n-g rock and roll weekend. He strained to hit some of the high points on the songs, but the rest of the band never lacked energy throughout the show.

Guitarists Mattias Barjed and Ian Person were awesome rockin' guitar players, smashing the audience with monster riffs, cool kicks and outfit changes. Drummer Fredrik Sandsten was spot-on with bashing insistent drums all night, though, with his mild-mannered looks, he resembled the high school dork.

Lundberg meant it during "Mind the Gap" when he sang, "We're taking over, and we might as well blow you away." Wearing a long black caftan that silhouetted his considerable bulging stomach, Lundberg jumped into the crowd later in the set for "21st Century Ripoff". He moved toward the back of the room, exhorting everyone to crouch down while he sang how "everyone's been cheated by everyone," and the house lights shone down on all. Great stuff, and the band rocked on.

Musical highlights included "Nevermore" (with Barjed sporting a double-necked guitar), "Sister Surround", and "Instant Repeater '99", though the crowd also loved the piano-driven "Tonight", well executed by the band's keyboardist Martin Hederos (who's also a member of successful duo Hederos & Hellberg, who recently toured Europe with Ryan Adams).

The Cato Salsa Experience opened the triple bill, staying true to any opening act attack -- keep 'em short, fast and full of energy. Not unlike Detroit's the Sights, this Norwegian band fused a heady brew of fast and loud garage spunk with psychedelic boogie forays. Sweden's Citizen Bird, all six of 'em onstage, played a psychedelic, guitar-fused heavy drone attack that on its own is a worthy sound, but the band's singer added his Ian Curtis-inflected vocal stylings to the band's slower, sweet songs.

� 28 November 2002

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[> Subject: This one is excellent

Author:
Oatmealgrizzly
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Date Posted: 23:15:50 01/02/03 Thu

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/21/music-babcock.php

Music Reviews
Canon Fodder
by Jay Babcock

THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES at the Point Loma Quality Inn Hotel, March 23 (2002)

"They're gonna a build a new dimension/And make a soundtrack of our lives/They're gonna build a new dimension/And drill a hole of imaginary time," sings Ebbot Lundberg on the Swedish six-piece the Soundtrack of Our Lives' "Firmament Vacation (A Soundtrack of Our Lives)," a 1996 song that can be read as a sideways-statement of purpose for a band firmly lodged in 1966�-1974.

Tonight, a portal to that new dimension has been opened in the unlikely location of Point Loma's Cactus Rose Saloon, a studiously bland hotel bar that's usually host to country-and-western hickery, not squads of unrepentant mods, rockers and Summer of Love hippies. And yet here we are -- thanks to the for-the-love-of-it work of Mike and Anja Stax's Hipsters club -- in a temporary '60s wonderlounge of oil-lamp projections, wall-size pop-art murals, and onstage go-go dancers decked out in blue-and-white Swedish-flag blouses. The vibe is groovy rather than kitschy; it's the kind of show where the opening bands' lack of polish/talent is made up for by their enthusiasm, the endearing presence of family members and friends from work in the audience, and the knowledge that the Greatest Meat-and-Potatoes-and-Space-Cakes Rock & Roll Band in the World is gonna arrive onstage any minute. That may sound mad, but give a listen to any of the Soundtrack of Our Lives' wonderful worth-the-search (and yes, English-language) albums -- this is a band that actually measures up musically, lyrically and performance-wise to their obvious inspirations: the Who, the Stones, early Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the Doors, the Faces, etc.

Tonight, as with the band's show earlier in the week at the Roxy, front man Ebbot is the beer-torsoed weirdbeard in a mumu, opening up his big ol' psychedelic soul on one song, goofballing it like a class clown through the next, roaming the audience in the third, testifying in the fourth. He's a sweet cross between Jim Morrison, Dennis Wilson and that guy from ABBA, and he's a generous presence: To look at this Uncle Rock and frown seems as impossible as not complying when he asks everyone to sit down midway through the affably admonitory "21st Century Rip Off." (Incredibly, everyone does.) The band rocks and booms, stomps and boogies; by the end of the set they're taking choice requests from the audience of fewer than 200, most of whom have never heard the band before.

"It's a special night," says Ebbot at one point, beaming. Indeed. Let's hope we get to visit this dimension again sometime soon.

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