Concert Review: Death Cab for Cutie with Ra Ra Riot

Death Cab and Ra Ra Riot played at the UCSB Event's Center (aka "Thunderdome!") last night. I'd really like to start by saying something nice, but I can't help it. The sound was absolutely AWFUL.

Some background: UCSB students won this "free" concert for registering the most students to vote before last November's election as well as another "free" concert by the Decemberists for most new voter registrations. After we were declared victor in these contests, it was revealed that while the bands would play for free, the school was on the hook for the overhead costs of the concerts (sound, lighting, venue, ticket distribution, etc.) In the middle of California's, the UC's, and UCSB's budget crises, this was not possible. As a solution, our student government passed on the Decemberists concert, and creatively found funding for the concert.

My question to whoever was in charge: did you get your buddy to run sound last night? Do you realize there are monkey's who more effectively run a sound console? You know that good sound can make a bad band and bad sound can ruin a great band? I'll bet you do now. The bad sound ruined to great bands last night. I recall at least two occasions for each band where I heard what sounded like a mistake in a song followed by the band looking around to get back on. Considering both bands also spent their entire set telling the monitor engineer to make adjustments (this usually doesn't happen after the first two songs), I'm not willing to chalk up mistakes to Death Cab and Ra Ra Riot having a bad night. They just got screwed by the sound engineer.

On the upside (and weighing the bad sound), Ra Ra Riot played really well, and Death Cab gave me chills on two songs: Transatlanticism and (guiltily admitted) Soul Meets Body. But most of Death Cab's set came from Narrow Stairs, which is definitely my least favorite of their work.