The following review was going to be posted by altohio.com, but due to the unfortunate circumstance that no pictures were taken to accompany the review, it sadly won't go up. BUT, after getting permission from this young fellow, In The Fridge is posting the whole thing for you to read right here. Enjoy!
ALSO: CLICK HERE FOR WEAKNESS PURCHASING AND TOUR INFORMATION
Weakness: Good band, in need of dancing people.
Aaron George.-Akron.
This weekend has seen Akron invaded by alcoholics on motorcycles. They come from all over the world, to celebrate their triumph over alcoholism and their membership in A.A. For those of us who live here and do still drink, it is a neat event, and worthy of respect, but nothing to make you say “Just water for me.” to the bartender.
On Friday Akron was also visited by bands from Columbus and Cincinnati. The group from Columbus was The Phantods, the folks from Cinci, Weakness. I am going to go ahead and disappoint all of you Phantods fans out there now and let you know that, sadly, I had to miss the bands performance. I am intrigued by the Phantods, and was looking forward to being able to write about them, but unfortunately they played later than I had planned and my day job demanded my presence early in the morning. So I had to leave before being able to see them, hopefully they will return sometime and I can make it up to them. I did however get to see Weakness play, and it was a show that was good enough for me to risk writing this only half accurate review.
To say the least, Weakness was a surprise. At my first sight of the tight jeans, black and thick rimmed glasses, and even the in-between beards, I had visions of something screamo, something mellow dramatic and not to fun to see regardless of the music. Even the name “Weakness” was sort of off putting to me, nothing good is normally associated with weakness, and the word conjures up bad thoughts. I am only guessing, but I think the band knew this when they chose the name though, and the irony of their performance and the definition of the word works well for them.
The best way I can think to describe the bands sound, and I have been chewing over it for two days now, would be to take the song “Paperface” by Weezer, clean it up a bit, organize it, make it a little louder, and stretch it over the length of eight or nine songs. That same yelling anger, but in a sometimes lighthearted way, it is powerful while not being overbearing, and when done right it is very enjoyable to hear and witness. Weakness seems to enjoy playing their music as well, and puts on a very good show.
I imagine that if the band had had a more enthusiastic audience in the basement of Annabelle’s that night; the show would have been much more memorable. Normally I would never pin the blame for a somewhat boring show on the audience, but in this case I was really surprised. Aside from two local guys who seemed to enjoy the music and were willing to show this by dancing, and myself after seeing the band play and knowing what it is like to play to an empty (or dead) house, everyone watching remained a good 15 feet from the group. If you looked at the people, they bobbed their heads, and seemed to be having fun, but the interaction just wasn’t there.
From what I heard, and what I confirmed from the bands myspace page (www.myspace.com/weakness) the guys have some pretty clever lyrics up their sleeves to go along with their gritty, chugging music. Like in the song “Foreign Place” where the words “Woke up in a foreign place…Lights explode on a marquee, got lipstick stains like shark teeth.” There is something you have to admire about a group semi-nerdy looking guys that don’t sing trite, depressing love songs and are bold enough to yell through half of their music without reducing it all to garbled growling.
In fact it was only when the band did slow things down that the performance lagged a bit. The song “No Anima” which does seem like it would be a good piece of music when recorded, lacked the same vigor that was present in the rest of the music, and didn’t work well in the middle of the set list, it was almost like being shocked, but in reverse, so that while you are expecting a jolt you end up with nothing out of the ordinary. Also the word anima, when sung live, slightly sounds like the word enema, and there is a huge difference between the two meanings and the similarity can lead to misconceptions among a beer drinking group of listeners.
The band is on tour now, though from what I was led to believe many dates have been cancelled. However it is clear that this group is all about getting out their and playing their songs. This is a new band (very new) but when you see them play they don’t have any hint of green to them. Honestly, any new band that will get up and go on a tour, even a mini-tour of surrounding areas, it shows either a real dedication to the music, or is an indicator of the sort of recklessness that fuels so may great rock shows. Most local bands end up stuck in their given city for years, and while this develops a strong home base, it is nice to see a different approach.
It would be a lie to say that this is a band that is out making completely new noise, and sadly I think this will be their biggest difficulty (everyone I spoke to compared them to Weezer…hell, I did it a few paragraphs up). But it would be an even bigger lie to say that this band isn’t worth going out to see and dance to…be sure and dance folks, this is music after all.
Aaron George.-Akron.
This weekend has seen Akron invaded by alcoholics on motorcycles. They come from all over the world, to celebrate their triumph over alcoholism and their membership in A.A. For those of us who live here and do still drink, it is a neat event, and worthy of respect, but nothing to make you say “Just water for me.” to the bartender.
On Friday Akron was also visited by bands from Columbus and Cincinnati. The group from Columbus was The Phantods, the folks from Cinci, Weakness. I am going to go ahead and disappoint all of you Phantods fans out there now and let you know that, sadly, I had to miss the bands performance. I am intrigued by the Phantods, and was looking forward to being able to write about them, but unfortunately they played later than I had planned and my day job demanded my presence early in the morning. So I had to leave before being able to see them, hopefully they will return sometime and I can make it up to them. I did however get to see Weakness play, and it was a show that was good enough for me to risk writing this only half accurate review.
To say the least, Weakness was a surprise. At my first sight of the tight jeans, black and thick rimmed glasses, and even the in-between beards, I had visions of something screamo, something mellow dramatic and not to fun to see regardless of the music. Even the name “Weakness” was sort of off putting to me, nothing good is normally associated with weakness, and the word conjures up bad thoughts. I am only guessing, but I think the band knew this when they chose the name though, and the irony of their performance and the definition of the word works well for them.
The best way I can think to describe the bands sound, and I have been chewing over it for two days now, would be to take the song “Paperface” by Weezer, clean it up a bit, organize it, make it a little louder, and stretch it over the length of eight or nine songs. That same yelling anger, but in a sometimes lighthearted way, it is powerful while not being overbearing, and when done right it is very enjoyable to hear and witness. Weakness seems to enjoy playing their music as well, and puts on a very good show.
I imagine that if the band had had a more enthusiastic audience in the basement of Annabelle’s that night; the show would have been much more memorable. Normally I would never pin the blame for a somewhat boring show on the audience, but in this case I was really surprised. Aside from two local guys who seemed to enjoy the music and were willing to show this by dancing, and myself after seeing the band play and knowing what it is like to play to an empty (or dead) house, everyone watching remained a good 15 feet from the group. If you looked at the people, they bobbed their heads, and seemed to be having fun, but the interaction just wasn’t there.
From what I heard, and what I confirmed from the bands myspace page (www.myspace.com/weakness) the guys have some pretty clever lyrics up their sleeves to go along with their gritty, chugging music. Like in the song “Foreign Place” where the words “Woke up in a foreign place…Lights explode on a marquee, got lipstick stains like shark teeth.” There is something you have to admire about a group semi-nerdy looking guys that don’t sing trite, depressing love songs and are bold enough to yell through half of their music without reducing it all to garbled growling.
In fact it was only when the band did slow things down that the performance lagged a bit. The song “No Anima” which does seem like it would be a good piece of music when recorded, lacked the same vigor that was present in the rest of the music, and didn’t work well in the middle of the set list, it was almost like being shocked, but in reverse, so that while you are expecting a jolt you end up with nothing out of the ordinary. Also the word anima, when sung live, slightly sounds like the word enema, and there is a huge difference between the two meanings and the similarity can lead to misconceptions among a beer drinking group of listeners.
The band is on tour now, though from what I was led to believe many dates have been cancelled. However it is clear that this group is all about getting out their and playing their songs. This is a new band (very new) but when you see them play they don’t have any hint of green to them. Honestly, any new band that will get up and go on a tour, even a mini-tour of surrounding areas, it shows either a real dedication to the music, or is an indicator of the sort of recklessness that fuels so may great rock shows. Most local bands end up stuck in their given city for years, and while this develops a strong home base, it is nice to see a different approach.
It would be a lie to say that this is a band that is out making completely new noise, and sadly I think this will be their biggest difficulty (everyone I spoke to compared them to Weezer…hell, I did it a few paragraphs up). But it would be an even bigger lie to say that this band isn’t worth going out to see and dance to…be sure and dance folks, this is music after all.
-Aaron George, iusedtobecool2@gmail.com
Love,
ITF
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