(*All Photos By Magic Stick Mish*)
SHOW REVIEW: Cursive w/ Facing New York
LOCATION: Ackerman Grand Ballroom - UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
1/11/07
As a starving college student, nothing is better than a free thing. Offer an amazing band to a bunch of UCLA students who have been desensitized by their first week back at school, and you cannot go wrong. Make the concert free to anyone who could show up, and you pretty much guarantee a second Christmas to the college kids who arrive to see the show.
Ackerman Grand Ballroom was not full to capacity when a lesser-known acoustic act took the stage. Following the sound of such artists of John Mayer and Jason Mraz, but without the finesse and the class, the act bored the crowd, who came to see a higher energy act. However, all doubts were assuaged when Facing New York took the stage. A perfect blending of dysfunctional sound and artistic grace, Facing New York took experimental music to a new level. It was the band's dischordious harmonies that brought the crowd together - the students may have came for Cursive, but they left Facing New York fans.
However, Cursive proved to be the definitive act, despite the fact that they took the stage extremely late. The eight members of the band played the show with a whimsical energy that seemed to permeate throughout the crowd. Lacking the manic stage presence that Cursive was known for in their earlier days, the band still captivated the audience with by playing their music with such fervor that it created frenzied dance pits in the center of the crowd. The bass, the cello, the horn section, the guitars, the drums, and Tim Kasher's voice all combined to make songs that made students thrash around in frustration or skip around in glee. Lead singer Kasher kept the dialogue between songs fresh by saying whatever was on his mind - ranging from admitting that he was trying to like the crowd, but he wouldn’t say that he liked them if he didn't mean it to a 15-minute diatribe that involved a cat hiding behind a lemonade stand. Cursive dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts that night, providing a performance that shook the halls of UCLA with the bands unconventional sound.
