No, this isn’t a complaint about living in Shanghai or China, but rather – CONCERT! Yes, New York indie-pop-shoegaze band The Pains of Being Pure of Heart came through Shanghai as a preview of this year’s Jue! Festival and played in Shanghai at Mao Livehouse

The opening band was one of my favorite Shanghai bands – Boys Climbing Ropes, whom I’ve written about many times on here. They played a lot of new tunes which hopefully means a new album sometime soon. I didn’t recognize any of their songs except for “Socially Awkward” – so completely new material – at least to me.

Xiao Punk and Jordan

Then it was time for Pains of Being Pure of Heart. Reading a lot of the online chatter, a lot of people were mentioning “My Bloody Valentine” or shoegaze/noise-pop. But me, I hear a lot of Velocity Girl in their music.

Set-list

It reads:
This Love is Fucking Right
Belong
Higher Than the Stars
The Tenure Itch
//////////////////////////
Heart in Your Heartbreak
Say No to Love
Falling Over
//////////////////////////
Come Saturday
Young Adult Fiction
A Teenager in Love
//////////////////////////
Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
================================
Contender
My Terrible Friend
Everything With You
Strange

Not really too much to say about the show – Pains were really great to see live. And up close. and for relatively cheap (120 RMB for pre-sale tickets – that’s like $18). One funny note was that Chinese American Peggy Wang, the keyboardist, got on the mic to greet the crowd in Chinese. She said “I’m happy to come to Shanghai. This is my first time. My Mandarin is really bad, I’ve been in the US too long” – her accent wasn’t great, but it was perfectly understandable.

Pains Rocking Shanghai

Great crowd

Next up will be Death Cab for Cutie, also here for the Jue Festival, on Friday!

But then, there’s other bands that are somewhat embarrassing to enjoy. Me, I like Panic at the Disco. A Las Vegas based emo band, whose fans tend to be teenage girls and guys who wear black eye-liner. Even with their overly pretentious song titles (a sampling: I write sins, not tragedies; The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage) they write decent, pop-punk stuff. Dancable in the way that Franz Ferdinand is dancable.

Anyways, they came through Shanghai and I went to see them play. They were quite good, except for the annoy crowd members (they were given a huge glass of Jaeger and this really annoying guy kept yelling at them to chug it). I wouldn’t really go out of my way to see Panic – but since they were down at Mao Livehouse and it was a Friday night, they put on a pretty good concert. As much as I like watching local DIY Chinese bands, it is fun to see a professional band who has played in front of huge crowds put on a tight concert.

The rest of the set is here.

friday night reviewed here my thoughts: xiao yoi (lead singer of pinkberry) was ill, and the crowd was clearly there for sonnet so they had trouble getting the crowd into it. candy shop had to do this terrible promotion for jaeger which killed any momentum they had. sonnet had some great danceable franz ferdinand-esque tracks which i really dug . . . a lot of experimentation with loops and dubs and electronic sounds from a sampler, which i did not dig. boys climbing ropes continue to rock and continue put on a great show. i am a huge fan.

saturday night photographed here by jenn wong and here by me. boys climbing ropes continue to rock and continue to put on a great show. i am a huge fan. st. vincent was fantastic – lots of experimental insturmentalation sounds combined with a beautiful voice.