Since I didn’t think I had any real need to see Eux Autres again, we showed up about an hour late for this show. Eux Autres hadn’t started playing yet, so we sat around and watched their set. As usual, they opened with “Ecoutez Bien” and closed with “Le Project Citron,” which are, admittedly, their two best songs. I said last time that I thought I really might like them if they cut their set in half, which is pretty much what they did. Maybe they should halve it again. Fifteen minutes would be just about right. There’s something really offputting about their stage presence. It alternates between feeling like they’ve just had a fight moments before getting on stage and feeling like every (rare) comment is some kind of in-joke. I really don’t look forward to seeing them again next month.

Anthony Rochester started off a little slow. The first few songs were accompanied by his iPod, which produced a full (if kind of muddy) sound, but weren’t especially energetic. The set picked up some once the Hepburns took over as his backup band, but he really got the crowd worked up with his finale song, which was about social networking websites and needing a friend request manager due to the number of friends he had. The crowd (by which I mean, the other bands and the dozen or so civilians) loved it.

The Hepburns finally went on, but we were pretty exhausted by this point. We got a table right up front, which was great for the first two-thirds of the set. The band was clearly very excited to be on tour and, even though their songs aren’t particularly high-energy (aside from “Tokyo Rollerball Cheerleader Chant”), the show was engaging and lively. Then a couple guys sat down behind us and started smoking heavily, while holding a heated discussion in Italian. After a while, we got tired of that, so moved to the padded bench seats in the back of the club. Very comfy, but less engaging and more sleep-inducing. Eventually, the Italians left, which meant the total number of people who weren’t in bands, on the road with bands, or running the club came to about eight. By this point, I was exhausted and took off as soon as they finished playing.

We arrived a little late, but I don’t think we missed more than a song, since they were still working out monitor levels and such. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I started listening to Saturday Looks Good to Me years later than everyone else, since they were initially on a lousy emo label. I know there are a lot of people who really dislike Fred Thomas’ voice and much prefer the songs with female vocals (which is mostly everything until recently, at which point it’s become about 50-50). Those people would probably be disappointed, since Fred was the only vocalist in this particular lineup (which was him, plus a bassist, drummer, and keyboardist). They’d be further disappointed as the set list consisted pretty much of all the songs on Fill Up the Room that he sings. Generally, pretty good renditions of those songs, except that he kept messing around with a little sampler unit mid-song. I’m not entirely sure what he was going for, since the samples just sort of sounded like random noise and, as far as making a fuller sound, didn’t really balance out the loss of guitar and vocals (even when he used a sampler pedal to loop a guitar piece). Not a bad show, and it was free, so I’m not going to complain.