By Brendan O’Reilly
On the eve of All Hallow’s Eve, Say Anything and Hellogoodbye rocked Hammerstein Ballroom for the 11th stop on the MySpace Music Tour.
Say Anything started the show, with frontman Max Bemis stage center, flanked by two guitars on one side and a bass and additional guitar on the other. Coby Linder, tucked away on the rear of the stage, provided the crashing drums.
Bemis was astounding; his voice did not falter once as he screamed out songs through the set. The guitars raged next to him, though Parker Case eventually traded his ax for a keyboard. The band only slowed down once, when Bemis picked up a guitar of his own for “Spores,” a break-up song.
Though some of Bemis’s lyrics may come across as emo, and Say Anything has even been billed as an emo band, this is hardly the case. The fans Say Anything attracted were wearing sideways hats and not because they think it’s ironic
Bemis came off as neither an emo-kid nor a Dude Guy. Rather, he just made it apparent that he was as excited to be there as members of his audience.
But the award for best stage presence of the night goes to Forrest Kline, simply for the fact that he danced as awkwardly as he does in Hellogoodbye’s “Here (In Your Arms)” music video. He did stop to speak with the audience between each song, as Bemis did, but, when he did talk, asked to be excused for not wearing a Halloween costume. Hellogoodbye was going to perform as Team Zissou from Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” but the costumes didn’t arrive in time. As Kline had blogged on Hellogoodbye’s Web site, “I’ve got our collective costume planned. But we dont have it yet so hopefully it turns out sexy. Cause we’re gonna be the slutty version of something. Because Halloween is our opportunity to dress how we wish we could the rest of the year. which is slutty. really slutty. or very Wes Andersony. I forget.”
In lieu of the “Life Aquatic,” Kline started the set stating “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society,” Ã la “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” In keeping with the theme, plastic trees with fall leaves was scattered around the stage and a black sheet with light coming through pinholes simulated the night sky.
Hellogoodbye’s sappy, pop-rock love songs went well with the atmosphere, though Kline acknowledged that many of those in the audience would be too young to get the reference.
To close out the set, the band played chart-topper “Here,” with a little, unexpected something. Kline slipped lyrics to Daft Punk’s “Digital Love” into the song, leaving some of the audience members confused and others singing along, uninterrupted.
Both Hellogoodbye and Say Anything were on the top of their game yet they should have been doing it separately. Though the bands have had members work together on EPs before they made it to the big-time, Hellogoodbye and Say Anything do not complement each other anymore. This was evidenced by how the sea of crooked hats dissipated after Say Anything’s set and did not return for Hellogoodbye. While the bands may share some common fans and some history, the pre-Halloween show proved that they shouldn’t share a stage.
Having just released sophomore record “In Defense of the Genre,” Say Anything took the stage at Hammerstein last week. (mtv.com)
Hellogoodbye is still going strong on a wave of success from the band’s first full length album, “Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!” (finddance.com)