The Show Shoulda Been Packed: Love as Laughter

By Jennifer Maerz

Every once in a while you hit a show where everything is there: the energy from the superfans; the electricity from the band; the old songs you hoped would be played and the new stuff that sounds awesome punched out live. The only thing missing is the big crowd to appreciate it.

Such was the case with last night's Love As Laughter show at the Rickshaw Stop, where there were maybe 100 people watching a great show.

So I'm taking a minute to give this band another plug, in hopes that the next time they come to town, Sam Jayne and company will double the number of folks who hear gold in those songs.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the music is never quite static. To me the band's output is somewhere between the Northwest's obsession with artfully sweet indie pop and a Neil Young-dusted California sound. Live, LAL extends the jamming a bit, stretching to towards the boudaries of jam band in the same way as, say, Built to Spill. But in the end LAL isn't a bunch of hippies, or indie hipsters, or bearded rivivalists. They're in a no man's land, which makes their sound all the better.

Check out a couple of the streaming songs at the official website here (especially "Paul Revere," which sounds even better blasted out live). Or go a little further back, to "In Amber," posted on the Brooklyn band's MySpace page.

And then, there's this video for "Dirty Lives"
.

Finally, here's a little more about the band, and its connection to Modest Mouse, from last week's paper here.

I'm just sayin', this is one band that deserves a wider audience.