Something's in the air tonight...

...mark my words, something's about to break.

Yeah, my eardrums.

Last night's concert (Keane and Mat Kearney with The Helio Sequence opening) at DAR Constitution Hall was, in all honesty, painful. At the risk of sounding like a lame old man, it was just too loud. I have been to a lot of concerts over the years, many of which were hard rock and were very loud, but I think last night was the loudest of all. And for what? We are talking about Mat Kearney here, whose set was the loudest of the three, not Black Sabbath or Rage Against the Machine. Do you really need to bludgeon our ears to death with excessive volume for a set by a relatively mellow artist? Keane and Mat Kearney do not warrant that level of volume, not to mention the interior of Constitution Hall has really good acoustics. It's not an open-air arena where you have to worry about sound escaping. In this case, it had nowhere to go other than make the audience wince and look for earplugs.

And it wasn't just loud, it was bad. I'm not talking about the performances, necessarily (although that is another issue), I am talking about the musical experience for the audience. In addition to the master volume being way too high, the balance and mixing of the instruments and vocals were way off. The bass was way too high, drowning out the vocals and all other instruments, risking to bring down the structure of the theatre due to the consistently powerful vibrations. The bass guitar and the bass of the drum were way too high. Painfully so.

It's just too bad that the audio levels and volume were such a distraction from what could have been a great concert. Kearney played some new songs and seemed genuinely excited about releasing his new album. His quick comments about one of his songs being featured on Grey's Anatomy (and therefore popping up on radio stations across the country) was funny and I personally appreciated it. It was something to the effect of "You work so hard on these songs, pour your heart into them, write them about life and love and friends and family, and then some producer comes up to you and says 'We should have doctors make out to that,' and you say, 'uhh... ok?'" The new songs sounded good, albeit moving closer to the pop rock genre in my opinion, and I wanted to go out and buy his new album and have him sign it, but that didn't happen.

Then there was Keane. The cherubic Brits rocking out on pianos and now guitars as well. Tom Chaplin clearly has a great voice that creates the signature sound of the band, I'm not going to contest that. But he sure does love the spotlight and the attention. He started out buy winning over the crowd by talking about how excited they were to be here in DC again and to be playing here. His bubbly demeanor made everyone think he was in a great mood and was loving life and loving sharing this experience with us, the audience. But the extended pauses after the songs so that he could soak up the applause got a little old after, say, the third time he did it. This wasn't after the final song or after the encore. It was after every song. That comes across as a but egotistical to me.

Regardless, they put on a good show, played everyone's favorites, had people singing along, although I am sure it was difficult because of the beating our ears had taken during Kearney's performance. The only other comment I will make is that even though it is understandable, it still annoys me when a band takes time out of their concert to wax political. If you have a strong opinion about political issues or countries or foreign policy, fine, you're welcome to have an opinion and use your status as a rock star to talk about it (as I am sure I would do if I were in their position), I just wish you wouldn't do it during the concert. Tell Rolling Stone what you think about Obama and the political climate in America. I paid money to hear you play your music live, not get a political lecture from a musician from Britain. That's all I am saying.

In all, good night in general. Note for future DAR shows: don't plan on eating the food provided downstairs. Options are lukewarm italian sausage in a soggy bun with some onions and peppers sprinkled on top or awful tasting, bone-dry chicken tenders with no dipping sauce. Both come with fries and cost $13 each. There is no way that was worth 13 bucks, even for the convenience of eating at the show.