No Doubt/Paramore/The Sounds @ Fiddler's Green 5/27/2009

First concert in awhile, how exciting.

The Sounds are a Swedish rock band fronted by a female (as with all bands on this tour), and a bit of an 80's synth influence throughout. In many ways they're sort of reminiscent of No Doubt in fact (when they ply the 80's style stuff). As an opener, they did all that could be asked for; though most of the crowd remained seated a few were already up and dancing, and most people were at least tapping their feet or bobbing their heads in time with the music. A few songs were really solid, a few were mediocre, but I'm inspired to grab a CD by them and check it out, and everyone I was with asked if I had any of their music I could get to them, so a good crowd response without a doubt.

Paramore seems to be a bit of a polarizing band. Some people see them as the epitome of the commercialization of music, another disposable band full of lackluster musicians selling the same songs corporations like to sell to mainstream America. Those people hate fun. Paramore is fun, so thus, this explains their hate of this band. I was a bit disappointed with the new songs they played, but maybe the album will be a grower just as Riot was (All We Know was an instant like though, interestingly). The crowd drawn by this band was an interesting mix by comparison to No Doubt fans. Hipster teen girls and ex-hipster 40-ish girls...always fun to see where people will end up in 10-20 years. I was also disappointed to find out Paramore has a (pretty good) song exclusively on the Twilight soundtrack. Now the question is if I will defile my computer enough to get the soundtrack. Oh and their failure to play Born for This was a sad let down.

No Doubt was without a doubt (no pun intended) the highlight of the night. From the entertaining and elaborate stage setup, to the crowd energy, just an amazing show overall. Gwen's ability to interact with the crowd is fantastic, and the band is entertaining while still performing well and not inhibiting the musical performance. Embarrassingly, I had not heard more than half of the setlist prior to this show, but thankfully those songs were all so catchy and enjoyable that I had no problem getting into them as if I'd heard them a dozen times. The middle of the set list did drag ever so slightly, but by the time they jumped into Don't Speak they were an overwhelming force that inspired the crowd to all but spark with the electricity in the air. Just a Girl was also a highlight of course, especially when she made the women shut up (for the first time all night hah) and just had the men sing. Quite entertaining. Of course, the women blew the men away when their turn came.