Anders wrote:Porch didn’t sound right, really poor.
After watching most of these videos, I feel like this band is best viewed through the lens of a bunch of friends that fell into jamming together for whatever reason, ended up having a great time, writing some songs, etc. (not dissimilar to TOTD), and are now taking a vacation with it. These guys clearly enjoy playing together and have a great energy, and when you watch it it's infectious. There's not the same "business as usual" vibe you sometimes get from PJ or true EV solo shows.
But musically, at least in regards to the non-Earthling material, it's pretty bereft -- more bog-standard classic rock covers, karaoke versions of PJ songs where Klinghoffer and Watt are just copying Mike and Stone's solos ("Wishlist," though karaoke is probably the wrong term since EV seems to change most of the second verse to be about New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen), scrappy crowd-pleasers that now feature four guitars when they barely had any functional use for three ("NFY," "Porch"), etc. It's fun hearing Chad add some different flavors to some old warhorses, but the idea that these guys are coaxing something new and fresh out of these songs is completely foreign to me, and that's not meant to be cynical -- I just think it sounds like what it probably is, i.e. EV throwing PJ fans a bone after peppering them with an hour of unfamiliar material.
There is a lot of charm to the whole thing, though; most of the music so far has been pretty unmoving to me but I can't watch these videos and bring myself to begrudge them the good time they're having. Eddie's hand gestures while Watt is soloing during "Porch" from about 2:50-3:10 is a delight -- he starts off doing these tentative air guitar motions, and then moves into this thing that looks like a cross between the Wayne's World "we're not worthy" bow and an attempt to cool off Watt's hands. It's like he knows he's supposed to go over to that side of the stage and act awestruck when his bleached-blonde lead guitarist starts shredding, but he's trying to figure out the gesture that's "just right" for this exact guy. Good stuff.
