There are so many great aughts era acts that long ago disappeared, having not blown up and their musicians needing real jobs. That’s doubly true for New York City, which bats high in both great aughts music and cost of living. So, you have to really celebrate the artists that are still here, still putting out new music, still doing local shows at places where beers are still cheap, such as when +/- came to Brooklyn’s Union Pool on Saturday, June 1st for the release party for their first new album in a decade, Further Afield (QRO review).
Union Pool (QRO venue review) has been a low-cost hangout in Brooklyn for a few decades now, surviving other small venues & dive bars, and was hopping on Saturday night (even though the nearby L train wasn’t running). So hopping that occasionally bar-goers would wander into the back room venue, only to be told they needed a ticket to what was a packed show. Of note was the usual age inversion of the audience – instead of young folks up front and oldsters hanging in the back, it was the middle-aged long-time fans & friends of the band who were nearest the stage, from Brooklyn Vegan’s Bill Pearls to a guy who looked so much like David Cross that you were afraid to ask if he was David Cross. But thankfully it wasn’t just people who could remember NYC before 9/11, but also newer arrivals to the Big Apple in the back.
Not that it hasn’t been awhile for +/-. At one point, they joked it took two years to make the record – and eight years to get their shit together. Yet Further fits in nicely with the indietronica that they helped invent back when The Postal Service was a side project for the Death Cab guy. This night, Afield songs such as opener “Borrowed Time”, “Calling Off the Recue”, “Gondolier”, and the pressing “Driving Aimlessly (Redux)” went great with old numbers like “One Day You’ll Be There” and “Steal the Blueprints” from 2006’s Let’s Build a Fire (QRO review – the second album your correspondent ever reviewed for QRO, so has a special place in his heart & ear). Of particular note when the band would all stop-start in unison – it would suck with other acts, but was exact right for this band with this music.
As one gets older, you learn to savor your favorite bands while they’re still here, because you never know when they won’t be (just ask any Boomer Beatles fan, Gen X Nirvana fan, or Millennial Amy Winehouse fan). And you get happier when an old favorite comes back, like +/-.
