Division Day

The Mae Shi

Eulogies

Echo - October 2, 2007

Live Review and Photograph by Alexis Roberts

Division Day is sort of “emo” by definition, yet somehow they are still completely listenable and legit. October 2nd marked the release of their new album titled Beartrap Island, and in recognition of that momentous occasion, they invited friends Eulogies and The Mae Shi to celebrate. Not to mention this show at The Echo was also the kick off of their cross-country tour.

Eulogies are a good little band with a lot of spunk and personality. Since they were the openers, not too many people really got to see them play because people didn’t really start showing up until way later in the night. They carried out their set while the handful of kids that were there kind of roamed around, chatted and scoped the merch tables.

The story didn’t change much for the LA natives The Mae Shi either. As they took the stage the crowd did bulk up a bit, but ultimately not enough to make for a memorable show. The Mae Shi always go all out to give a good high-energy, crazy set but the atmosphere was not nearly the same as it usually is during a Mae Shi set. There was no crowd surfing, or pushing and shoving, or spastic dancing. They went through their usual routine of on stage wardrobe changes and knocking things over, but the overall lack of energy in the room was the main cause of the anticlimactic nature of the show. It could also just be that if you have seen it once, you have seen it a million times.

Division Day did draw a good crowd though. Their emo-poppy-shoe-gazey-with-a-twist-of-experimental-rock songs make friends with everyone’s ears easily, and thusly that makes Division Day a big hit amongst everyone. The ladies love them for their sensitive lyrics and pretty melodies while guys love them for the fact that they can listen to them without feeling like they’re doing something too girly. Sometimes you can hear hints of Fugazi, Elliott (not Smith but I’m sure that there is an influence seeing as how it may or may not be coincidental that he had a song titled "Division Day") and The Appleseed Cast with their flowing melodic songs heavily laid in distortion and effects. "Reversible", for instance, sounds similar to something that you would have heard from one of those bands toward the late 1990s which is fine with me. The '90s are the new '80s and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. Right now this kind of stuff is everyone’s bread and butter, as it should be. There are enough throwback bands to the other decades.

Not exactly a carbon copy of any of the aforementioned bands, Division Day is bring their own flavor to this music. You could say it rocks harder. It’s not as sappy. Their song "Ricky" is the perfect example of this. Faster, harder and less whiney, yet still a pop song, it ranks high up on tracks to listen to from the new album.

They have a great live energy and really pound out those songs, but at the same time they don’t really move about the stage very much (not a lot of room to move on the Echo stage in the first place) so that may have just been due to the circumstances of the venue.  Also they don’t give much stage banter other than the usual “this song is called _____” or  a humble “thank you very much".  After giving us a good long set of eleven songs they called it a night and the crowd went wild for a few minutes hoping for an encore that they did not receive. This show was probably the best possible way to kick off their tour and celebrate their record release, as it was completely successful and the room was overflowing with love for Division Day.