On Monday June 5th, 2017 I went with my rock concert girlfriend to see Modest Mouse and Morning Teleportation at The Complex in Salt Lake City. This is my review for the Morning Teleportation portion of the concert. Since I'm unfamiliar with with Morning Teleportation I don't know the name of the songs they played.
Morning Teleportation features two guitarists, one of the guitarists doing the singing, a drummer, a keyboardist and a beaver? The keyboardist had a beaver stuffed animal sitting on his set. They played 8 songs, which was about 5 songs too long. They had some good moments, but not enough. Forty five minutes was just two long for them to play. They also suffered one of the same things that hindered Modest Mouse, a lot of random noises in their songs and songs just ending. All the bizarre random noises were also irritating to the ear.
I would describe their music as a combination of Syd Barrett early Pink Floyd, Fiery Furnaces and some Modest Mouse flourishes thrown in. Morning Teleportation is a long way from being a headliner. No shame there, just keep on working. Keep on expanding your sound and make your music more accessible. Here's a couple of songs from Morning Teleportation, I believe this is the first song they played Monday night, "Expanding Anyway":
"Re-wiring Easily":
Following their set was some of the worst in between sets music I've ever heard.
After about a half-hour of standing on the hard concrete in the midst of sweaty youngsters Modest Mouse finally took the stage at 9:15, taking to the stage to the sound of buzzing. Modest Mouse isn't a conventional band. At least on record this quirkiness works for them. They have a lot of good songs and I had spent a lot of time getting more familiar with their catalog. Despite that I didn't many of their songs. Looking at the list below the only songs I recognize without hearing them are 4, 7, 8, 10, 19 and 20.
1) "3rd Planet":
2) "The Tortoise and the Tourist":
3) "Never Ending Math Equation":
4) "Dashboard": (Oh good a song I've finally heard of!)
5) "Dramamine":
6) "Gravity Rides Everything":
7) "Bukowski":
8) "Satin In A Coffin" (One of the few highlights of the night.)
9) "Trailer Trash":
10) "Wicked Campaign":
11) "Lampshades On Fire":
12) "Fly Trapped In A Jar":
13) "The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box":
14) "Custom Concern":
15) "A Different City":
Encore, the encore break was at least 10 minutes- which is just unneeded. That same buzzing sound that started the show was going on through the entire encore break.
16) "Parting of The Sensory":
17) "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes":
18) "Dark Center of the Universe":
19) "Blame It On Tetons":
20) "The Good Times Are Killing Me" (I like this song, but their arrangement was terrible.)
Modest Mouse was one of the worst concerts I've ever seen. They played too many songs that I didn't know. The reason why I didn't know most of those songs is because they weren't very good. A lot of times it was two or three boring songs in a row. For the most part the arrangements weren't good, songs just stop unpredictably, there's little coherence in the setlist. When Isaac Brock spoke he was weird and what he was saying wasn't intelligible. When a performer says "we're not done yet" and one is less than happy about that, that gives you an idea of this concert. Standing the whole concert on a hard cement floor also doesn't add to a concert.
I wish they would've closed the set by not playing those first two songs- we had enough boring, lesser known songs by that point. Then I would suggest play the good arrangements of "Tetons", "Good Times" and the song everyone was waiting for "Float On". Honestly this encore was boring, none of these songs came off particularly memorably. I probably would have left earlier if I had known they weren't going to play "Float On". And if I'd known how much of a disappointing concert it would've been, obviously I wouldn't have gone.
The die hard Modest Mouse fan was probably pretty happy at their bizarre setlist, but for the average fan it was disappointing. If you were to ask me I would let you know there's no point seeing Modest Mouse in concert. There were very, very few highlights on a night of several disappointments.
Next concert: Seeing Jack Wright, the Neil Diamond tribute act, on June 12th. Although a tribute act that should be a lot better. I'll be able to sit, I'm familiar with the songs and hope for a great evening.
themusicaddict
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