Snowden, ¡Forward, Russia! @ Bowery Ballroom, 11/28

Sadly, this could very well be my last show of 2006. The lineup of December shows in the city is severely unintersting and last night's show brought a good, not great, ending. Snowden far surpassed my expectations. I have only a handful of tracks from their album Anti-Anti but seeing them live brought their somewhat monotonous studio tracks to life. Their bass player really steals the show on stage and I should mention that she could very well give Stellastar*'s bassist a run for her money. I'll let InMyTree report back on that after their Black Cat show in December.

¡Forward, Russia! have received quite a bit of acclaim this year for their spastic live shows. I do love the album and their set last night was certainly entertaining but I can't say that it was necessarily jaw-dropping. The entertainment is completely based on the stage antics of lead singer Tom Woodhead (the drummer looked like she could have fallen asleep at any time) and there's no denying that he's a complete wild man on stage. I think he travels with an extra long mic chord to wrap around himself on stage. He also seems to have the mic toss and catch routine down which he also breaks out several times during a song. Strangely, in-between songs he turns into shy guy and barely says a word to the crowd. The bass player, Rob Canning does the talking. Now I could rattle off a bunch of numbers (Thirteen, Fifteen Pt. 1, Seven, Fifteen Pt. 2) that would consist of the song titles from their setlist but I'm not sure that would mean anything to most. They did play, for the first time in the States, a new song that breaks the trend of numbered titles, "Don't Be a Doctor" which actually sounded more like 8 songs rolled into 1. Overall, the setlist was short, as expected, and consisted of a one song encore.

Related:
AOL Spinner was there and they have a ton of pics from last night
NME was there too and they called it "triumphant"