Rapid Fire Review Week continues with HT’s favorite Disco Biscuits Diehard Matt Quinn’s review of this weekend’s two Hammerstein shows:
It’s been a long year for The Disco Biscuits. With “new” drummer Allen Aucoin at the kit, virtually every fan of the band agrees that they are playing with the kind of vigor and creativity that’s been absent since the end of 2002.
Sure there were the brief flashes of greatness in the ’03-’05 era. But for the most part it was directionless and unfocused, a band very unsure of where it was going, a band running out the clock on its first incarnation. After an adequete NYE run, a short spring tour and a summer spent on the festival circuit, the Biscuits’ fall tour has seen them firing on all cylinders in venues across the country, and the shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 11/24 & 11/25 were certainly no exception.
The first night opened with a section that featured exactly the type of setlist creativity Biscuits fans have been craving. The Overture is normally a tightly composed, classical style piece that features a trance jam in the center of it. In lieu of the trance this night, the Biscuits dropped into a 30-second composed segment of Little Lai, then a 30-second composed segment of Bazaar Escape, then a 30-second composed segment of House Dog Party Favor, then directly into an entire Bach Invention (#13 in A Minor, to be exact), then picked up the end of The Overture where the trance section would normally end.
The entire segment was obviously rehearsed, and rehearsed well. There was no jamming between the segments; they were played as though it were one giant composed piece. Apparently the setlist had this labeled as “The OverBerzerk,” but I’ve taken to caling it “The Berzerkerture.” I just think it rolls off the tongue better. Whatever you want to call it, it was well-planned and flawlessly executed.
Read on for the rest of Quinn’s stellar review and download his recordings from both the 11/24 and 11/25 Hammerstein shows…
