Flickerstick – Parish @ The House Of Blues – New Orleans, LA 12.08.02
Posted by Rhett Walker on 12.17.2002
A Flickerstick show is worth every penny, and they’re not too expensive to see (yet). Catch them on this short tour if you can, or wait until the fall, but go see them live.
In the past year and a half, I have seen Flickerstick a total of six times, making them the band I have seen more than any other to this point in my life. After each show, the band always sticks around to talk to the fans, sign autographs, and take pictures, and each time I talk to them, I have always told them that they get better each time I see them. This show was no exception.
After taking a few months off, Flickerstick decided to do a short tour to promote their new live album, Causing a Catastrophe. Beginning last month and running until New Years Eve with a show in their home town of Dallas, TX, it is a series of dates in smaller, more intimate venues than they played on their last tour. This is the reason for the show being in the Parish room at the House of Blues instead of the main hall. As is the case with Flickerstick shows in New Orleans, they once again packed the house, and as is the case with any Flickerstick show, it was a five star performance.
The band opened up the show with one of the new songs from the live album, Believe, which is a very solid song to open with. With the live album having been on sale in the stores for less than three weeks, it was cool to see a lot of the fans singing all the words to this song, and the band enjoyed it too. They followed with Got a Feeling, which has become my favorite song to hear them perform live. After that, I cannot remember the order of the rest of the songs, aside from their always entrancing closer, Direct Line to the Telepathic, so I’ll just talk about the rest of the songs they played.
From Welcoming Home The Astronauts, the band chose the songs that come off best live and get the best crowd reaction: Smile, Coke, Beautiful, Sorry…Wrong Trajectory, and their (jokingly) “attempt at a love song,” the crowd favorite Chloroform. Also played was their cover of Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You, which overshadows the original by a long shot, and another cover that I’m not sure what it was. The band also played three brand new songs this time out, Catholic Stars and Chocolate Bars, Bleeding, and the tentatively titled How You Like Me. All three of the new songs were excellent, and they show growth in the songwriting of frontman Brandin Lea and Guitarist Cory Krieg. Bleeding, however, was the standout of the new tunes. Another longer tune like Direct Line, Bleeding provided the same kind of intoxication as Direct Line while being able to fit in a slot in the middle of the show very nicely. I am really looking forward to hearing the new songs on the next studio album, which the band says will be out Summer/Fall 2003.
The 411: A Flickerstick show is worth every penny, and they’re not too expensive to see (yet). Catch them on this short tour if you can, or wait until the fall, but go see them live.
