Sing-Sing at TT’s

We went to TT’s last night to see Sing-​Sing, the new band of Emma Ander­son from Lush.

In all, I have to say it was just OK, due mostly to my own per­sonal tastes. I was a fan of Lush, and most of the other guitar-​based british bands of 10 years ago, so I guess the pri­mary dif­fer­ence here was that it wasn’t guitar-​based at all. Sure, Emma was play­ing guitar, and they had a key­boardist who also played trum­pet, how­ever the bulk of the sonic stuff came from a little iBook sit­ting next to the singer Lisa.

I’m not clear on who wrote the songs, or who even recorded all of that dig­i­tal stuff, but I got the impres­sion that Emma has done the 4-piece guitar thing, and wanted to try some­thing else. It didn’t help that she had a cold, and sniffed her way through the night.

For Lisa’s part, she’s not nec­es­sar­ily my cuppa tea. She posed at the mic stand, look­ing upward with an angu­lar jaw line, as if she was expect­ing to be hit in the face with a sweet breeze. I give her credit for her singing – it was part Chanteuse, and part sexy vamp, but hon­estly – this is TT’s! In Cambridge!

And only few of the usual brit­mop kids showed up – it was mostly 30-somethings who look like they sell insur­ance or teach school. One group of guys looked like they were going to a Bruins game, in their T-shirts and back­ward Sam Adams caps. The girl with them had a DMB (Dave Matthew Band) t-shirt on, which is com­pletely inex­plic­a­ble as to how she found her­self at this show.

So, I guess I give high marks for orig­i­nal­ity and for the nerve to attempt a “big” show, even at a place like TTs. Loved the drummer… he looked like he was enjoy­ing him­self thouroughly, and that eased the cough­ing scowl that was on Emma’s face a bit.

You can’t sit around and whine about the past, so good luck Sing-​Sing.