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Just four days after the official release of “23″, I was able to catch Blonde Redhead at the Metro in Chicago this past Saturday night. Luckily, I’ve been listening to the album for a good month now, so I wasn’t at all let down by the fact that their performance was practically entirely dedicated to the new release. I don’t think the rest of the crowd, who took to screaming requests in between every song, had managed to buy the new record yet, though. Seriously, that’s one of my greatest pet peeves. Ever hear of a set list? This isn’t TRL, after all. The band is here to support their new record, so please do your best to familiarize yourself with it if you want to be able to sing along. If they really want to play “Elephant Woman” they will — your screaming is not going to change anything, especially with this band.

Let me start with the record, which I give a 9 out of 10 (9 out of 10 what, though? we need to come up with an official RTP rating system, don’t you think?). The strides the band has made since 2004’s “Misery is a Butterly” are similar to those made in between that record and their 2000 release, “Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons.” Their sound has become fuller and spacier, and the songs have gotten much, much better — some might argue even a bit more mainstream. Highlights for me include “23,” “Dr. Strangeluv,” “Silently” and “Publisher,” but all the tracks are not only listenable, but relatively accessible and I dare say objectively enjoyable to a certain extent as well. Kazu’s lyrics are still a bit esoteric at times — at their most grounded focused on love and/or some ambiguously-depraved act thereof — but I tend to group Blonde Redhead in with other bands whose vocals are just as comfortable and equally important playing the role of instrument as they are narrative vehicle (read: Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Mogwai, AIR, etc.). And just like Blonde Redhead’s previous releases, the dichotomy between Kazu and Simone’s vocals are near perfect, rarely engaging in duets or harmonizing at all, but rather, assigning a distinctive sex to each and every song. Only on track 7, “Publisher, ” one of the record’s standouts for sure, do the two share the mic, and they do it well.

So on to the show…

My girlfriend and I arrived just about 25 minutes before the band took the stage, which was early enough to see Simone outside the Metro walking his dog, then stand in a long but fast-moving line, hit the bathroom upon entrance, quickly grab wristbands and a couple beers and secure a decent standing spot about 15 feet left center from the stage, but late enough to miss the opener, Midnight Movies, who I actually would have liked to see, but not enough to leave my apartment at 8pm. Seriously, who does that? The people who always get those great seats on the balcony, I imagine.

The band took the stage at least 10 minutes before the lights went dim, just as they did when I last saw them (Lollapalooza 2005), causing a premature stir of excitement and one of most impressive instances of a band pretending the audience isn’t even there. Sadly, as is becoming more and more the case, especially at over 18 shows and especially at the Metro, the crowd was full of morons, some drunk and some I’m sure just born that way. These same idiots who would soon engage in the aforementioned screaming of song requests first decided to grace the band’s pre-show set up time with awesome phrases like “fuck yeah!” and “you’re fucking hot!” and “i want to fuck you!” and “japan fucking rules” and other similar pleasantries. so yeah, lots of saying fuck, which is always presents Americans in an extremely endearing light to foreigners. I don’t know if it’s because i’m getting old or what, but I no longer have patience for this kind of behavior at rock shows. This isn’t 1990 anymore. There’s no more moshing and there’s no more crowd surfing. People stand and watch, and for the most part, I think that’s a good thing. Especially at a Blonde Redhead show. I know you’re really into the band, Mr. Superfan, but if I have to look at your arms waiving in the air for much longer I might be forced to cut them off. Plus you’re taking up about four times as much floor real estate as the rest of just with all your ridiculous flailing and what not.

Anyway, when the lights finally went down, the band broke into Dr. Strangeluv immediately — great opening song, but not my prediction (which was “23″). They battled their way through almost the entire new record, with the exception of ‘Silently’, definitely one of my favorite tracks, and a couple others. There was absolutely no stage banter whatsoever, but a plentiful amount of sexy, sometimes raucus and always contagious dancing by Kazu. In fact, her and Simone spent an entire 2-minute instrumental of one song with her arms around his neck as he wailed on the guitar and danced in unison with his female counterpart. The off-stage portion of the encore lasted just long enough for me to go to the bathroom and grab another beer. I arrived back at the stage just in time to hear the opening guitar chords to “Falling Man,” which is one of only three or so older songs they played (”Anticipation” was another), and also the very song that turned me on to this band in the first place. They closed with an energetic version of “Equus” — another good choice for bookending the set.

So the show was great, but the one thing that I don’t get about these guys is the amount of backing track they use. I first noticed this at Lolla a couple years ago, and it seems to have gotten worse when they perform the tracks on the new record. I realize they’re only a trio and the new record is pretty heavily produced, but i think there’s a fine line between trying to reproduce the studio recording enough to make the live performance work and actually trying to recreate it verbatim, and i think they tend to opt for the latter approach. there were clearly times when Kazu could have been singing live instead of letting her background track do it for her while she danced, but whatever. Maybe that’s how Asian/Italian combos roll these days, and if so, far be it from me to dwell on it as long as they continue to make good records that remind me of Twin Peaks and visit Chicago at least once every year or so.

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