stay in the shallow end

Mates of State is coming to Satellite Ballroom on September 25! Words cannot describe how overjoyed I am at this news.

I haven’t been able to get enough of the indie pop lately. I don’t know what’s triggered this shift to a sunnier disposition, but my Recently Played playlist for the last few weeks has been populated by Dressy Bessy, Sprites, Tullycraft, Belle and Sebastian, Park Avenue, and Tilly and the Wall.

Ahhhhh, Tilly and the Wall… lpk and Michael have already covered the awesomeness of the Tilly and the Wall shows we went to, so I’ll spare you that. For me, the big story is that after seeing Tilly in D.C. Saturday night, we sold our Ani tickets on Craigslist and came back to Charlottesville to see Tilly again.

I can’t really explain why this is a big deal to me, but it seems really significant. We’ve seen Ani a bunch of times, and I was really looking forward to the chance to get up close at the 9:30 Club. I’m guessing it really has nothing to do with Ani, but more the awesomeness of Tilly. I haven’t seen a band put that much of themselves into a show in a very long time. Seeing them so happy made me so damn happy.

If you were to graph the rise of a band’s popularity, I’d say there’s three general regions. When bands aren’t popular enough, they play some crappy venue and only a couple dozen show up. I imagine it’s hard to put on an energetic show with so few people mirroring it back at you. On the other side, when a band gets too popular, people show up just cause they’ve heard of them, and while you have a crowd, there’s still no energy. Tilly is in the sweet spot. They’re big enough where they draw a healthy number of people that truly love their music, but they’re just under the radar, so they don’t get people wandering in off the street. They play nicer venues that are still small enough to be intimate, and they’re able to nearly fill them up with people that love them. I get the impression this is the first tour in the sweet spot, because at both shows, D.C. especially, they seemed genuinely surprised that so many people came out and were so into them. Both nights were so awesome, and I didn’t think I had it in me anymore to lose myself in a show like I did with Tilly. I still can’t think about it without smiling, and I am so crushing on the girls of Tilly, who Michael and I have decided to just refer to as Blond Tilly, Brunette Tilly, and Dancing Tilly.

So yeah, I can’t get enough of the indie pop. We saw Dressy Bessy last week at Starr Hill, and next weekend we’re going to Lollapalooza. And I hope to see all of you at the Satellite Ballroom on September 25, so Mates of State can rock your socks off.

Blog Note: The use of “fuck” in the title of this post is a first for stay in the shallow end. Expect more if it.