You're Cheering Me Up and I'm Thanking You

Playing for an audience that is not completely your own is difficult. Matching musical acts is also very difficult.

The result is that of mixed crowd reaction, which could at any point swing in either direction, from acceptance to ridicule.

This was the mood while I watched New Buffalo try to win over the crowd at the Trocadero last Wednesday.

Most of those in attendance were there to see headliner Stars, but there was clearly a faction of people, especially squeezed up front and taking pictures, who were there for New Buffalo.

I wasn't up front, though. I sat in the very back, for no reason in particular except that she started as we were getting our drinks and we sat down as quickly as possible in the balcony.

Now, the first time I saw Sally Seltmann, aka New Buffalo, was at CMJ a couple years ago and, to add to her shy persona, the show itself had been very awkward.

During the daytime, there are shows set up in the convention center where only press and industry people are allowed. The result is that there's a stage, then about twenty feet of empty floor, then a ring of people with cameras and notepads, all shooting pictures and taking notes while concentrating very hard. Not exactly a fun atmosphere for a show.

At the time I liked her voice and the songs themselves, but there was something missing. It wasn't until I found The Last Beautiful Day when I got back home in my mess of CDs from publicists that I really sat down and listened to it. And that's when it sank into my psyche.

This time seeing her, she had around a thousand people watching, and as I've said earlier, most of them were fans of Stars. She was a lot more relaxed, and seemed to be having fun for most of it.

There was one point where she stopped in the middle of a song and told the audience that her piano was slipping in and out of tune. She asked how many people could tell, and about seven out of the thousand raised their hands.

However, it was bothering her and so she opted to do the rest of the show on guitar. I can understand that perfectly. I know from performing that if something doesn't sound right to you, it can really annoy you.

The people I came with and the others who were there to see her, myself included, were all fine with it. However, after a few more mentions of the fact that she couldn't use the piano, the people next to me started heckling, and these guys were rather douchy, if I do say so myself.

For the rest of the set they were talking over some of it, just conversing, and occasionally they would flat out start booing. Not that any of this could be heard from the stage, I'm sure, it was just really, really obnoxious. But, they were also quiet sometimes, and I was able to enjoy the show despite their shenanigans.

Highlights for me included the two songs she used the good ol' iPod backing tracks for. One of the songs was the first track on Somewhere, anywhere, the name of which I'm forgetting. I can't exactly remember what the other song was.

Obviously I'm not one of those journalists who takes notes during shows. I always think that she sounds best with more instrumentation. She seems to disagree here, though, since she keeps stripping things down.

It was really amazing on the songs where it was just voice and guitar and the entire audience was captivated. It happened a few times, but there was a good amount of talking over a few of the songs. I believe during "Come Back" it was probably the worst, which was distracting.

But another great moment came when she just said, "I think I'm going to use the piano on this one anyway. If it goes out of tune, it goes out of tune, whatever." (That's a paraphrase, by the way; it was something along those lines, though.)

I know that it was off the new album, but I can't think which one it was at the moment, I can just think of her hitting lower octaves with the left hand for single hits and then coming back up to the regular bass register.

All in all, it was a great show and it was nice to see her in a more show-like setting. The douche bags on my left were a definite downer, but that's no fault of Mrs. Seltmann. And even their reaction wasn't as bad as when I went to see Fantômas open up for Tool. They got flat out booed there.

Hopefully next time I'll get to see New Buffalo in a headlining position, comfortable in front of a crowd strictly there to see her. But until then, I've enjoyed the shows I've gotten to see so far.