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Sorry Dawes ... We Won't Get Fooled Again

By Kim Bellware in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 11, 2010 10:00PM

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(from left) Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith and Wylie Gelber (Chicagoist/Kim Bellware)

We were wound up in positive feelings and perky expectations for indie-folkers Vetiver and headlining newcomer, Dawes, last night at Lincoln Hall. What we came away with, however, was the musical equivalent of gruel. Vetiver expended plenty of effort being aggressively mediocre, but Dawes was slightly more offensive with their blithely derivative music that showed no traces of the wistful folk rock that had originally showed promise. Both bands, to their credit, were earnest and fully committed to their sets, so it seems like the kindest thing to is roll out the wagon of faint praise.

The challenge with Vetiver reminded us of a friend's dilemma who couldn't decide whether or not to break up with a girlfriend who he found perfectly pleasant, but otherwise dull. With bands, as with people, nice can go a long way--it provides no reason to be disliked, but it doesn't make for enough excitement to stir feelings much stronger than "meh." The band kept their set mostly in the range of vintage rock and roll, but even when doing their best Crosby Stills Nash & Young interpretation, the effect felt a little too diluted. The set was slow and even, full of fitful riffs that grazed the edges of honky tonk country (when spirited) and swampy blues (when intense).

Vetiver, who shared with the audience plans to record a new album "sometime next year," played several unnamed songs that would likely fill out their next record; from the sound of the new material, though, the band doesn't look like they'll be moving out of their comfort zone anytime soon. For a band that was able to wrangle some of the freakier elements of the freak-folk genre and make them palatable to the un-freaky masses, seeing them in their current state was a lot like watching an HBO show re-edited for network prime time. The one exception in their set was the hard-charging "Wishing Well," a swinging number that released as a special track for Record Store Day in 2009, momentarily living up to what we hoped they would be like. Had there been more moments like those, Vetiver might have sparkled more.

Immediately at the start of Dawes' set, we quickly saw that the two bands had far fewer similarities than we originally thought. The headliners kicked off with explosive energy, snapping us awake after the languid mellowness of Vetiver's set. Dawes had the proficiency and presence of a band that's been around the block a few times, pumped with the enthusiasm of a group on their first big tour. Dawes shared their buzz with the audience, announcing that the Chicago show was their first sold-out gig of the tour. As a thank-you, they paused near the end of the schlock-fest, "How Far We've Come," to instruct the audience in some callback singalong. Things didn't improve much after that. The most interesting thing we could do with Dawes' mind-numbingly derivative music was try to guess which band they were affecting next. Our end tally included late '80s Rod Stewart, The Rolling Stones, Train, Counting Crows, Dave Matthew's Band and a note-by-note rip-off of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Mary Jane's Last Dance."

Our feelings were certainly not shared by the audience where we saw plenty of fans singing along, dancing and clearly enjoying themselves. We would have loved to understand where their excitement was coming from since at it seemed as if we were hearing a completely different band than the crowd. Dawes does play music well, but it'd be overly generous to call what they performed "their" music. Beyond just banal, the band was so safe and well-worn that what could have been genuinely fun and lively tunes were instead rendered free of any genuine excitement or novelty.