Smith Westerns | Concert Review

Story by Catherine Larsen 

| Published Mar 1, 2011

Walking through the pack of exiled smokers that crowd the doorway of The Waiting Room, I am already aware of my failure to blend. My crumpled, inkjet-printed ticket and the ‘x’s on the backs of my minor hands did not override my lack of jeggings and layered tribal-printed cardigans.

After a pleasant surprise from opening act Unknown Moral Orchestra, they thank the audience and retreat. A few drunken 19-year-olds stumble onto the stage, grabbing guitars, steadying themselves on microphone stands. The singer starts to say something incoherent, interrupting his own thought with a rebellious “…Fuck it” and the entrance of a howling guitar from the left. Listening to their most recent album, I hadn’t realized how much of these guys’ musical appeal relied on the curly-haired guitar player; he smiles at the guy standing next to me, reaches the neck of his guitar down, and pats him on the head with it, continuing to play flawlessly throughout the entire night.

Smith Westerns slid into their love-stricken “Imagine Pt. 3,” but not before instructing the audience, “After you hear this song, go home and fuck your girlfriend,” with as much class as possible. Standout track “All Die Young,” was certainly the highlight of the night, until onstage banter turned to, “We want you to come snort us out after the show. Not smoke us out, snort us out. If you’re even adult enough to know what that means.”
The crowd let out a collective sigh, putting aside their entitled coolness to agree that this guy is a complete douchebag. But everyone is waiting for one thing: “Weekend,” the bouncy first single. As soon as it starts, it is obvious that the tempo is off, toppling the previously well-maintained balance of surging guitar and plain vocal structure. The disappointment was audible, and drowned the music as they finished with album-ender “Dye the World.”

Smith Westerns are a classic case of a decent band rendered less significant by unadulterated hipster bravado. On the drive back to Lincoln, tired and confused, I couldn’t shake the weirdness of spending the night being talked down to by an adolescent Joseph Gordon-Levitt look-alike.