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The Hives @ Barclays Center, Brooklyn 12.09.13

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Swedish garage-rockers the Hives played the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on December 9th, their second straight night in Brooklyn, and continuing their stint as opener for P!nk. While the P!nk/Hives combo may seem an odd pairing, it at least gets the Hives into a venue that matches their usually-ironic posturing as the greatest rock and roll band in the world. While the Hives are a Tasmanian Devil of a band in a small club, their show didn’t really lose any energy in an giant arena. In fact, it just gave singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist room for more of his stage antics. He strutted around the stage, onto the arena floor, into the crowd, and up into the seats, constantly reminding the audience of how awesome the Hives were and how lucky they were to be there with the band. And as usual, he was right. The Hives may just be the best live rock band going right now. After more than 20 years at it, the Hives put on a frenetic but tight live show. Plus, those were some sharp-looking, matching mariachi outfits.

Metric @ Bowery Ballroom 11.19.2013

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Canadian rock outfit Metric, on the tail-end of an arena tour opening for Paramore, played a small headlining show at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on November 19th. Not surprisingly, the show sold out quickly. Metric rewarded their fans with a 17-song setlist that was a bit varied from their usual show, heavy on songs from their two most recent albums, but also throwing in some cuts from 2005’s Live It Out. They closed out their five-song encore with an acoustic version of “Gimme Sympathy,” dedicated to Lou Reed, who singer Emily Haines credited with the song’s line “Who’d you rather be, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” in her Rolling Stone tribute to Reed.

Built to Spill @ Irving Plaza, 11.07.13

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Built to Spill

By this point in their career, guitar hero stalwarts Built to Spill have carved out a reputation for being a jam band for people who don’t like jam bands. Yet in concert, there’s not a lot of jamminess about them. Sure, the triple-guitar attack of BTS has a way of elevating what should be nice little 3-minute rock songs into 8-minute mini rock operas, but like operas, the songs have distinct sections, movements, crescendos, and—most importantly—clear end points. After all, the most insidious part of jam bands is the endless noodling. With Built to Spill, yeah, you’re going to get about 5 songs an hour, but for the most part, if you’ve seen them before, there won’t be a lot of unwelcome surprises of the endless-jamming variety.

That said, they sold-out crowd at Irving Plaza certainly seemed like a jam-band crowd, judging by the amount of awkward dancing and pot smoking. Plus, BTS obliged the audience with a setlist of mostly older tracks, after opening with the now-standard “Goin’ Against Your Mind.” The only new wrinkles were a trio of covers. First was guitarist Brett Netson singing lead on Captain Beefheart’s “Abba Zabba, then the encore opened with two newish BTS covers, Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” and The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now.” The latter’s delay-heavy guitar sounded a perfect fit for BTS, though Doug Martsch’s strained high-pitch croon would not remind anyone of Morrissey.

Built to Spill are at an odd place in their careers at the moment: An indie-rock band that’s still on a major label who haven’t released a record since 2009. Material for a new album was recorded then scrapped. And the rhythm section of Brett Nelson and Scout Plouf was replaced with new blood. They seem to be content touring for the sake of touring (or by appearances, playing shows while on break from their epic, decade-long camping trip). But if the crowd at Irving Plaza was any indication, they don’t need to hurry to record that next album. If BTS are less than perfect from now on, there’s nothing wrong with loving that.