Recent Stories with tag Deck the Hall Ball

As much as I would have been pleased for the Deck the Hall Ball to have doubled the set lengths for each of the openers and called it a night, that strategy would certainly not have pleased the kids squeezed in the front row with their flashing sunglasses and glowing light sticks.

After Santa's brief visit, 30 Seconds to Mars, the band that spawned a thousand snide music journalist twitter puns, arrived to the aggrandizing strains of "O Fortuna." Lead singer and My So-Called Life alum Jared Leto seemed to both crave and receive the affection of the crowd, with his forays to the barricade met with delighted screams, exhortations toward massive crowd surfing followed, and offers to sign every CD accepted....

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The opening half of last night's Deck the Hall Ball was a Whitman's sampler of poppy rock acts that might have seemed more at home at a fundraiser for KEXP than a holiday party for The End. The doors opened at the after school special hour of 4:30 p.m. to admit the around-the-block lines of mostly underagers waiting to get a prime spot for Muse.

By the time Visqueen finished their sound check, introduced Rachel's niece to the stage, and changed into their rocking clothes, the concrete arena had filled to respectable capacity for the hometown opening set. Each band fit about six songs into their thrifty twenty minute set: Vampire Weekend mostly played the hits from their self-titled debut and threw in "Cousins" [youtube] as a taste of next month's Contra. ...

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Last spring Phoenix released Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the feel-good album of the year that felt like a poppy antidote so much of the seriousness and bearded heft overtaking so many iPods. In Seattle, we eagerly scoured tour schedules and festival programs hoping that if they didn't at least grace us with their presence they'd at least make a stop within roadtripping distance.

All of that waiting was starting to feel futile, but now, at last, it seems that we haven't been forsaken by the Parisian electro-pop act that infused so many summer days and inspired so many YouTube mixes and re-mixes. They were just waiting for our desperation to reach levels significant enough to draw us into a cavernous venue for a commercial rock station's holiday party.

Sure, a spot headlining a medium-sized headlining spot would have been ideal, but it's still feels like a great winter gift that they'll be in town at all. You'll find them in the warm-up portion of a startlingly good lineup for the End's annual Deck the Hall Ball on December 15th at the WaMu Theater (the name survived the bank, apparently).

Moody English alternative rockers Muse headline the event; Jared Leto's gift to guyliner, 30 Seconds to Mars, gets the second-highest billing. Emily Haines's live-wire rock act Metric and the poppy preppy guys from Vampire Weekend open the show....

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