Death Set @ Lo-Fi Social Club

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Last Thursday night went with Joan, Jon (+1), Bagel, Matt, and L-Hill to the Lo-Fi Social Club, on Charles Street (near North) in Baltimore to see the Death Set play their last hometown show before they go on tour. Awesome, awesome show.

The band is three people (at least live), two of whom are from Syndey, Australia, who relocated some years back to NYC, and now Baltimore, where their style of hyperactive, sugar-rush punk have become a good example of how punk and dance music are becoming bosom buddies once again here in Charm City. The set began with a slow chanting, over a hip-hop beat, of the chorus from "Intermission," but a few moments in, they burst into "Impossible," one of their juvenile-sounding chant-rock songs, then the more hardcore and screamy, "Day in the Wife," and then a great version of "Intermission." They ended with two hit-and-run covers of Operation Ivy's "Bombshell" and Nirvana's "Territorial Pissings". The whole crowd was moving in one of those big sweaty masses of hipsterdom that you see at Floristree shows, or anywhere Dan Deacon or Double Dagger is playing. I was in that mass for a while. No one else had the guts to join me.

The highlight of the show, undoubtably, was the singalong version of "Negative Thinking," (Bagel and I are wild for this song. Wild for it!) and I'll leave you with the contrite, brilliant lyrics here. Check out the Death Set's forthcoming full-length, Worldwide, when it drops later this month....

If I felt cynicism,
I'd wrap it in a blanket of discontentment,
Fuck that!
I'd feel better knowing that I'd decided not to
When you were looking round
You veered to the right
Did you notice that?
And I feel better knowing
That I decided not to
In hindsight, I don't want
To be like the people I've liked.
Whoooo-oh-oh-ooooh....

MP3s of the whole show are here.