The Sounds at The Vic, 10/22/11

[rsadelle]

lakeeffectgirl's summary of this show was, "Saw The Sounds last night, and Maja showed everyone her underwear." This is a good summary. Another good way to get the sense of this show is to know that what convinced lakeeffectgirl and I to go was schuyler's insistence that "you can't be a proper lesbian if you haven't seen Maja's thighs in person."

Now, there are people other than Maja in the band. Four of them, to be precise, all Swedish boys, and if The Sounds were a band anyone cared about in a fannish way, there would be a lot of fic about them. Really, though, Maja is the star of the show. For this show, and for many other shows, going by a quick Google Image search, Maja looked like an immodest 40s chanteuse: hair pulled into a chignon with feathers at the top of it, high heels, and a sparkly, knee-length dress with armholes wide enough that we could see her bra and a slit all the way up the front. Because the cut of the dress wasn't good enough, she kept pulling her skirt up, just to make sure we got a good view of her legs and underwear. She also did high kicks. Her thighs, which are basically the fifth and sixth members of the band, are amazing, but I have to say I found her attractive the way I sometimes find men attractive: I understand it intellectually, but she's not really my type.

The audience for the show was interesting. I'm usually completely out of place at shows because I'm (a) too old and (b) not cool enough. This show had a more varied audience where I didn't feel quite so much like the odd one out. The audience was also at least half men. My companions said they'd never seen that many men at a Sounds show before. My favorite was the man with the shaved head in the second row from the stage who was at least a head taller than everyone around him and kept throwing up the horns. Our other favorite people were the person with the cardboard sign that said, "MARRY ME MAJA," and the person who brought Maja a Swedish flag, which she wore as a scarf and signed before returning. At one point, Maja took a sip of a drink offered to her from the audience. My only thought was: "That would be a good way to get DNA from a rock star who won't submit to a paternity test." It's possible that I've watched too many crime shows.

I don't know what else to say about this show. Maja was very high energy. They played the one Sounds song I know ("Something to Die For"). I had a moment where I had to stop moving and breathe very deeply because I thought I might pass out. At the time, I attributed it to the smoke effects, but since I came home and got sick, maybe that was just the beginning of that. We called the venue for set times so we could skip the openers and only saw part of Kids at the Bar's DJ set between acts. I know nothing about DJs and have no opinions on the set, but I liked the energy of one of the guys.