NIN Fans Go to modwheelmood @ elbo room, 6/10/09

Last time I saw Alessandro Cortini, he was throwing a keyboard over my head at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, at the last NIN LITS show. I had just found out that he was leaving the band, and I was sad.

I recently completed my NIN/JA tour, and going to see Ally with some of my NIN friends gave an interesting perspective to recent events.

I met up with vwesson and jessicasarahs at the show, Luckily, we had tons to talk about in the hour we waited for it to start. Once the three piece hit the stage, we got up from our tables and packed in around the stage.

After watching Ally do back up vocals and keys and such for NIN for three or so years, it was nice to see him take a leading role. The venue had a small crowd of what appeared to be NIN crossover fans, complete with misbehaving girls in the front row and drunk talkers in the back. Towards the end of the set, these two subsects became aware of each other, and a girl and guy started talking and making out or something right in front of Ally, who looked taken aback and said a few words in shocked commentary.

modwheelmood is dreamy electronic rock. It sounds much more hopeful than what someone called ‘the world’s most miserable people’ would create. Ally plays bass and sings, leaving his guitarist and drummer to play distant backup. It was a fairly straightforward set, about an hour in length, focused, and devoid of much talking except “we’ll be back in October”. The songs sound great live, they straddle electro and psychedelic rock well. Ally delivers the vocals in his shy yet passionate way.

I had never seen a show at the Elbo Room before, and it proved to be a worthy stage for a small show. The sound is quite good as well, and there aren’t weird line of sight issues that some of the smaller venues have.

After the show, we bought merch and waited to say hi to Ally. I recognized Fred Sablan of Goon Moon, who is helping out with the modwheelmood tour, and he chatted with us about some fun Jeordie stories. ZANE!

OVERALL: 9/10
modwheelmood performance: 9/10
venue (Elbo Room): 8.5/10
crowd/scene: 8.5/10
value ($13.00/ticket): 9.5/10
memorable: 9/10