Saturday Looks Good To Me / Make Believe - live in Chicago (Cover Artwork)
Staff Review

Saturday Looks Good To Me / Make Believe

live in Chicago (2005)

live show


We arrived just in time to see the Elevations setting up. And let me tell you, I was getting pissed off by how long they were taking. I could only guess by their name and the fact that they had a horn section and everyone was wearing suits that they were going to play a terrible murdering of Motown funk-soul. And that was even before their corpse of a singer came on stage. Despite the fact that their trumpet player was the sleaziest looking man I have ever seen and their tenor sax player had a Kangol hat on backwards Sammy Jackson style (yes they deserve to die, and I hope they burn in hell!), I decided to give them a chance. And twenty seconds into their show, I was back at my original opinion. Besides being downtempo and sleep-inducing and ripping off bass lines from Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix, I just could not stand looking at their lead singer. She had dark, baggy eyes, a sickly pallor about her face; overall, just Poe's wet dream of a woman. Well, disregarding that Poe had a penchant for the girl-childs. Blech. My favorite part was when they gave the Sammy wannabe solos and he rippped out some lines that were blatantly in the wrong key signature. I should know this; I play jazz tenor.

The crowd buzzed and gathered around for Make Believe, since anyone in Chicago basically has their dick in their hand, ready to blow a load at the mention of a Kinsella. I was intrigued. Being a fan of Joan Of Arc and CaP'N Jazz, the next Tim Kinsella project had my interest piqued. What was delivered was perhaps a harder version of Owls. The raw energy from CaP'N Jazz was apparent in Tim's screaming (yes, he was doing that again), the basslines were typical of Owls, the drumming hard and quick, but the guitar was extremely fast finger picking. Almost the entire time. Distorted. Experimental and noisy, it was really entertaining to watch and listen to, but it made me think; perhaps Tim needs to slow down in his musical endeavors. Regardless of how interesting Make Believe is, it really is just another Tim project and ends up sounding like everything else. I really like it, but I can only stand the same thing for so long without losing interest.

Saturday Looks Good To Me had no drummer, which was fine by me. In fact, I appreciated the music a lot better with only auxiliary percussion and the bass keeping the beat. They were interesting live in the way that they had a revolving door of musicians filling in where need be, but no one sat down at the drums even though I'm sure a few of them had to be proficient. Anyway, fun pop songs and slowed-down ballads, entertaining and whatnot, but not my cup of tea specifically. The guitar felt overpowering and they played mostly stuff of their latest release, which if you pay attention you know didn't float my boat so much.

So yeah, overall, not a bad show.