Clap Your Hands & The National - Iron Horse - 9/8/05

I've see tons of shows in my life but I never saw what happened last night at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton. I actually got to witness what happens when a band gets caught in the wake of another band's success.

The show was billed as "The National with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah opening for them". However, with the steamroller success of CYHSY, it wound up being "CYHSY with The National closing for them".

I got down there shortly before showtime and headed straight to the bathroom after the 2-hour drive. The bathroom situation at the Iron Horse sucks. Two single-toilet unisex bathrooms for the entire crowd and with Smith College nearby, the shows there have a high percentage of ladies. This all adds up to some long lines snaking through the basement. Well, as I got towards the front of the line, CYHSY's Alec Ounsworth comes sheepishly up to the front of the line and says "Uh, I have to play upstairs soon. Do you mind if I cut in line. I don't know what else to do." Of course, everyone lets him go to the front and do his business. On the way out, I asked Alec if he was starting right away and if I'd have time to make it to the bathroom. He stared at me for a moment, laughed and said, "I'll wait for you. We won't start until your upstairs." It was kind of funny and true to his word, I didn't miss a single note of the show.

I don't think the place was sold out but it was close. There were a lot of people there and the energy in the room was pretty high. They opened with a new song but as soon as they launched into "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" the room started bouncing. They sounded great. I had read the review on Said the Gramaphone about their show in Montreal being kind of tired so my expectations were lower than they had been. However, I didn't see any signs of them being tired or bored. As they poured through about 40 minutes of songs from their album and three new tunes (all three sounded as good as the released tunes; no "Satan Said Dance"), you could tell that people were very familiar with the album and there to see CYHSY. What I wasn't expecting was the mass exodus following their set.

I know CYHSY are very hot right now but The National has a damn good album out which I was excited to hear live. But I was in the strict minority. About 3/4 of the crowd emptied out of the place taking with them all of the juice out of the atmosphere. What had been a fun raucus show quickly turned into the equivalent of a band practicing for a handful of friends. Hell, the band members of CYHSY probably made up about 10% of the remaining crowd. I haven't seen an exodus like that following an opening band since Neutral Milk Hotel opened a Merge showcase at The Knitting Factory after the release of On Avery Island. But that was more understandable since it was part of CMJ and people are expected to float from show to show.

After about 20 minutes, The National took the stage and played a decent although a bit understandably unenthusiastic set. It's a shame because they are a good band with good songs. A lot of their songs are slow build-ups into loud finishes which can be tough to pull off live if the song gets rushed. But they showed a lot of control and did really nice versions of them. They played most of what I wanted to hear off of Alligator except for "Mr. November" and "Looking for Astronauts". One note about The National, lead singer, Matt Berninger is one tall dude. He has to be the tallest front man I've seen since that guy from Archers of Loaf towered over crowds in the 90's.

However, the most interesting aspect of the show was the akwardness between songs when it was painfully silent. Silence in startling contrast to the rowdy whoops, shouting and applause that CYHSY received between tunes. You could even hear the sound of the mic being placed back into the mic stand; it was that dead between songs. Plus, people continued to file out throughout the show.

Well, it came to the end of the set and as the band left the stage, Berninger left the stage, went out the door and just kept going. There was enough of us clapping to bring the rest of the band back for the obligatory encore but the akwardness from earlier became downright embarassing as we watched the band try to figure out what had happened to Berninger. Finally, one of the guitarists went to look for him. A minute later the guitarist returned empty-handed saying, "I checked out on the street but I didn't see him anywhere". This was followed by more uneasy moments as the band tried to figure out what to do. They saw Alec from CYHSY sitting at the bar and asked him to sing with them but he declined. They finally decided to do a number just instrumentally but I guess the drummer didn't want to so he got up and left. The bass player then sat behind the drum kit and the remaining members did a brief instrumental number before getting out of there themsleves. You can see the scene in the last picture here. They could call this line-up a side project...The National Doughnut...basically, The National with a big hole in the middle.

It was kind of sad to watch but also amazing. It was like the scene in Spinal Tap at the Air Force base dance when the band members started quiting on stage. It certainly had the "car wreck watching sensation" going on.

The thing I keep thinking about is that this is the beginning of a tour that is going to run across the country for the next month and a half. If this was The National's reaction to it now, what happens when they've dealt with these kinds of crowds for thirty straight days. This tour could turn out to be a mess. Perhaps they could flip-flop the bill and let The National open for CYHSY. Didn't that happen with a Cheap Trick tour following the release of Dream Police?