The Von Bondies @ Criminal Records (In-Store Performance)

Over the last year or so, the in-store performance has become much more frequent than I remember it being in years past, and I loves me a good in-store show for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's usually quite brief, which caters nicely to my personal attention span. Secondly, it's generally early, which caters nicely to my love of sleep. And thirdly, they are always free, which caters nicely to my being broke. After thoroughly enjoying The Hylozoists performance at Soundscapes earlier this week, I figured that I may as well go down to Criminal Records on Queen Street and check out the rock 'n roll assault that is The Von Bondies.

I got there rather early as I was expecting it to be quite packed. The Von Bondies are part of the killer Detroit garage scene of the early 2000's. This was a scene that included such heavies as The Detroit Cobras, The Dirtbombs and, of course, The White Stripes. The Von Bondies have continued to garner further publicity since those days, but unfortunately it hasn't all been good. There was the much publicized barroom brawl between Von Bondies lead Jason Stollsteimer and Jack White, which inevitably led to the lack of support from Jack. In the meantime, they sued their previous label Sire Records and went through a bit of a lineup change. Still, I figured that any publicity is good publicity, and all of that buzz would certainly bring people to the store on a Friday evening. By showtime, the store did fill up quite nicely, although it wasn't as full as I expected it to be. Also, I think for the most part, it was people who were curious to see what these guys are all about, as opposed to die hard fans of the band. No doubt, the die-hards were all at The Horseshoe later that night. For this set, they played mostly songs from the new album, which sees the band shift slightly from being a hard hitting rock 'n roll band, to being more of a hard hitting power pop band. However, emphasis should be placed on the word "slightly" since the band made it clear that they can still rock out with the best of them. I noticed that the female presence in the band seemed to be more for the purpose of melodic accompaniment, as opposed to thrashy throaty screamfests. The contrast was most noticeable when the band pulled out an older track which, if memory serves, was It Came From Japan, from their 2002 debut. The Mudhoney-like immediacy of that song was quite the headbanging change from their newer material. Still, I really liked the newer material which was filled with catchy hooks and endearing boy-girl harmonies. I'm pretty sure that they recruited a few new fans from this performance, and this is a good thing, since I believe that ultimately, this is what the free in-store performance is all about.

Photos: My pics of The Von Bondies @ Criminal Records are on flickr
Myspace: The Von Bondies
Video: Pale Bride on youtube
Video: It Came From Japan on youtube
Video: C'mon C'mon (Live on Letterman) on youtube