Miike Snow, October 15 at the Wiltern

Noa invited me to the Miike Snow show and I had the night free so I was in (Ghazaleh went too). I can't say I'm a gigantic fan: I saw them at Lollapalooza and liked them enough to get the album, and I saw a bit of them at Coachella, but I wouldn't have shelled out the cash to see the show alone. They're a group of producers who can write some really catchy stuff (having done some big-deal stuff for Britney Spears, which likely bankrolled their own material) and decided to make their own album, which is fairly faceless but it's agreeable enough. It could be a pop album if they had a good singer or a broad personality behind it but they have to settle for being a marginal indie-pop band, weird since there's a European sensibility to their music but also making them a bit exotic and sexy. We got there early enough to see opener MNDR, who was some chick with an effects board and a screen behind her that changed when the music/noise changed and I couldn't make out what she was singing and it was probably better on album but live it was just some boring techno and a chick dancing weird. Then Mark Ronson & the Business Intl., who could have just done a bunch of covers and left it at that. But the music was actually fairly catchy and well-performed and the covers (which Ronson built his first album from) that were played were agreeable enough, though Radiohead's “Just” as the second song was trying too hard. You could do worse with a performance by a producer-turned-musician. Our seats weren't great, which was a bit rough since I'm so used to standing on the floor or at least being at the front of the balcony, but considering that Noa got the tickets just a few weeks before the show, and for some reason it sold out after that, they weren't too bad. Besides, we got a good view of the stage and the Wiltern isn't so gigantic that a far-away seat ruins a show. Miike Snow went on, after an achingly long introduction, with fog machines layering the entire stage and everything else under smoke, which stayed for the entire show, usually obscuring anyone playing or being present on-stage. There were a few times that there was someone visible on stage but I couldn't tell you what they looked like or what they were wearing or if they were wearing those masks or not. It was a pretty standard show -- some good tunes but only so much of a set you can milk from one album. Stage banter was far from the centerpiece of the show and they let the music speak for themselves. The crowd was into it, maybe more than they should have been for a band of aging producers in masks but it speaks for the catchiness of the music and how quickly each song gets to its hook. Also, it was a Friday night and there were drinks. The show's structure was fine, clearly saving "Animal", their biggest hit (if they had one) for the end, except that there was some technical problem and they ended the show before they played it. I couldn't tell what the problem was, maybe something on-stage, but they stopped after a little over an hour and said that they would start the show again once they fixed what was broken. This stretched into a long intermission but there was still hope. As they were getting set up again they even played a few beats from "Animal", clearly as a test, and the crowd would have gone crazy if it hadn't been over as quickly as it began. They finally came back and played what would have been the first song in an encore, but not "Animal", then said good-bye and slank off the stage with no further sound coming from them. The crowd held their breaths, hoping that there was still hope, that maybe this was the end of a standard show and that they would come back for a real encore (or just a proper ending to the concert) or to play their biggest song, to this point suspiciously absent, but it just didn't happen. By the time the house-lights came up, everyone knew there was no point in arguing and it was just over. This wasn't the type of crowd to riot. It would have been a suitable show, and a band doesn't have to play their hits for it to be a good performance, but that a favorite song by a band who haven't proven themselves beyond ten songs wasn't played, whether it was through their own fault or otherwise, left a bad taste. Even worse that it was the last show on their tour. It's likely they'll be back but hopefully that show won't be a permanent bad mark on them. Just as well if it is, since they'll just go on being producers and probably have an even better career than performing the music themselves. But if there was anyone on the fence about them, that incident could be just the thing to prove there won't be much of an enduring interest in them. You can't cover a fatal error in a show with a mask or a fog machine.