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The Empire
12/10/1990
No Tour
The Empire, OH
Supporting: The Posies
28 Cover Image

Scans:

Review by John Soeder:

Last Augustm erstwhile Husker Du guitarist Bob Mould closed his show at the Empire with a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender." While you're pondering the relevance of that, consider this: Guitarist Ken Stringfellow has said that in concert his band sounds like Husker Du. All things considered, then, it really wasn't much of a surprise to see the Posies pound their way through "Surrender" for the final encore of their performance at Empire last Monday night.

What was surprising, though, was the marked contrast between the Seattle quartet's recorded and stage persona's. On their latest album, Dear 23, the Posies are a sophisticated pop band that might have crawled out of a time capsule buried some 20 years ago. This was not the band that came to Cleveland last Monday night. We got the post-punk Posies, a decidedly less subtle alter ego that sounded more like Seattle neighbors Mother Love Bone (or, for that matter, Husker Du).

The Posies' 15-song set drew heavily from Dear 23, with a handful of tunes from their first album, Failure, thrown in for good measure. Spirited renditions of "Apology," "Mrs. green" and "Golden Blunders" came across well, but particularly intricate songs like "My Big Mouth" and "Any other Way" barely survived the transition from studio to stage. The band's excessively heavy live sound tended to obscure subtle harmonies and wash away interesting chord progressions with a flood of decibels. The Posies deserved to be heard, but they shouldn't have forced the issue.

Cleveland's own Hot Tin Roof opened with a captivating set that got the balance right between high technology and garage band sensibilities. Backed by four of the area's finest, guitarist/vocalist Tom Lash was in fine form as he belted out urgent rockers like "Heart of Darkness," "Victoria's Secret" and "Warm Jets." Whether or not Hot Tin Roof upstaged the headliners is moot, but the local boys did seem to get more groupies.