Everyone was in agreement that the Generationals had a great backdrop for their show at Thalia Hall on Thursday night. The New Orleans based duo (Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer) were both stationed at synth/keyboard stations that were a blinding white color, and when illuminated by the intense light show going on on-stage, became essentially multi-colored glowing/hovering equal signs with disembodied torsos above them.
The two were backed by a drummer and a bassist, and about 2/3 of the way through the show they busted out the woodwinds/brass – two trumpets and a sax – brought in especially for their addictive “Ten-twenty-ten” single off the 2011 ActorCaster album and 60’s inspired “When They Fight They Fight” off 2009’s Con Law. Joyner and Widmer also played the majority of their fantastic new album Alix including crowd favorites “Black Lemon” “Reviver” and “Would You Want Me”. The two have very distinct and very different vocals, and it was fun and refreshing to have them mix it up, swapping lead vocals throughout the night.
I’ve been to a lot of Chicago shows recently with weird musician/crowd tension – the Augustines threw a hissy fit and stalked off-stage (with the hilarious insult “Vince Vaughn’s fat!”) during a particularly disastrous show last month and Bonnie Prince Billy had a weird heckler at his Halloween show (who kept insisting he looked like a tellytubby), so it was really nice to see how much the band and the crowd were enjoying each other at this show. In particular the male duo next to me who had their hands in the air for every single song, rocking out like there was no tomorrow (bros bouncing – almost as much fun to witness as bros brunching). The rest of the crowd was right there with them.