Chalk it up to a bad mix or some mid-tour malaise, but something was off at Sunday night’s Surfer Blood / Drums show. [All photos by Mike Wilson.]

Openers The Drums (full disclosure: previously unheard) played a brand of New Wave-derivative tunes mottled in tired phrases of beach-dom and surfing of the sort that's so vigorously infiltrated the music scene this summer, but that — let’s be honest here — lost its luster, like, two weeks ago.

Sound wise, they came off as rich and lively but grew more and more calculated and predictable as their set progressed. They were skilled, no doubt about it; the mix was pleasingly balanced and they sounded, what I’d guess to be, pretty true-to-album.

The issue, though, is the Drums sound more like an amalgamation of influences than a full-blown creation. A mixed breed of recognizable indie chart-flirters from the past 10 years, with a little bit of Julian Casablanca’s sleepy croon here, a splash of high-note, arena-filling Killers chorus there, and a little Franz Ferdinand pomp sprinkled generously throughout. Immediately lively, but contextually tired.

The lead singer's palsied gyrations didn’t help much, either. Dead-eyed and lanky, his moves harkened images of the late Ian Curtis almost too well except, you know, sans the legendary music behind him. The Drums repertoire seems too cheery for his whole weird, possessed schtick, and just ended up making the whole ordeal kind of off-putting after a few songs.

After a quick takedown and subsequent set-up, the kids of Surfer Blood [pictured above] took the stage to the sounds of the Jurassic Park theme. “It’s good to be back in Florida,” leadman J.P Pitts remarked in his longest non-singing sentence of the night.

This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2010.