The 88 @ The Troubadour - 7/13/07

The 88 are great. The end. Dot com. But there is a disturbance is the force, and I’m not sure what the deal is. I do not know why Muppet-haired Brandon Jay left the band, but his high-energy nerdiness was visibly missing from last Friday’s performance at the Troubadour. Also missing were lead singer/guitarist Keith Slettedahl’s trademark glasses (sweatily sliding down his nose), and the whole band-in-matching-suits gimmick. New to the line-up, a suspicious moustache.

Happily, they were still brilliant, what with those Britishly invaded hooks and jangly rays of pop sunlight. The show was sold out, the crowd nearing fire-hazard density, and you sort of got the feeling that our local babies were poised for rock and roll stardom.

The 88 are headed out on tour, notably playing the Fillmore in San Francisco with the Smashing Pumpkins on Aug 1. Now a four-piece collective signed to Island Records, they are set to release a new album late this summer. They debuted a bunch of new material at the Troob show, most of which sounded decent on first listen, but it’s hard to digest newbies in a live setting. Go go gadget album.

Ps, relating to this and other recent shows... there is an unexplainable increase of flannel on our streets and in our clubs. I repeat, flannel is on the rise. You heard it here first.

Video and pix after the jump...