Show: New Found Glory, Cartel, and The Early November

Kim bought us tickets to go see New Found Glory with Cartel and The Early November last Sunday at the Electric Factory.  NFG was the headliner but we like Cartel and TEN at least as much as, if not more than, NFG.  So we were psyched and it was an awesome show.  (Not least because the venue is now smoke-free, woot!)

We were late getting there, though, so we only caught the last 2 songs of Cartel’s set.  They played Q and A from Chroma, which they said they don’t usually play live (probably because "A" is a 10-minute song that starts out rock but morphs into techno).  It was a good performance, but one thing really bothered me.  Cartel is a very sing-along band; that’s part of why they’re so great.  But on the choruses, the vocalist sang the whoa-whoas totally differently than they are sung on the album!  When you’re a sing-along type of band, and your music has lots of whoa-whoas in it, and you play a show of those songs, you can’t change up the whoa-whoas!  You just frustrate and alienate your biggest fans that way.

The Early November put on a really good show.  My one complaint is that the background vocals were pretty much inaudible.  For some bands or songs, that wouldn’t matter, but in a few of their songs the background vocals cover alternating parts with the lead vocals, so if you can’t hear the background vocals you’re missing half of the picture.  For example, in "Hair" (the single from "The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path"):

Lead: "All I know, at the end of the day, is I love to smile now..."
Background: "...even if that’s fake."
Lead: "All I know is I’m done acting, and I’ll be happy for your life..."
Background: "...even if I hate it all."

New Found Glory played an awesome set and I didn’t really have any complaints.  I had followed the band during their first 2 albums "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and the self-titled album, and then they somehow dropped off my radar for a few years.  When Kim got tickets for this show, I bought the 2 newest albums "Catalyst" and "Coming Home" (and I love them both), but I didn’t get "Sticks and Stones", which they ended up playing 4 songs from.  So it did stink to not be able to sing along to one-third of the songs they played, but other than that, it rocked.