Despite my dedication to objectivity, or some semblance of it, as a music writer/critic/journalist, I found it really hard not to hate on a band called “Vintage Trouble” gracing the headlines of my inbox. It's just so insistent on the product delivered, I couldn’t help but think of this band as an audible equivalent to the just-remodeled strip mall bar calling itself a “gastropub,” “pour house” or whatever other bullshitty buzzword that gets you good Yelp reviews from rich, bored housewives these days.
Even so, thrust by some curious masochism, I found myself, five minutes later, bobbing along to a Youtube video of Vintage Trouble playing on Leno a few weeks ago. Maybe it was the pot of coffee marinating my insides, but you'd swear the ghosts of American soul, rock, and R&B royalty were hovering over the shoulders of these four suited-up dudes bouncing around the stage, led by a nice-afroed frontman who’d be a sure-shot winner in almost any [insert vivacious, black male singer from the 1950’s here] contest. It was good, good enough at least, to bring me out to a surprisingly sold-out Tuesday night show they played at the Local 662 earlier this week.
Bands like this, ones that emulate the glorious past with surgical precision, seem to draw pretty dichotomous crowds between the hip and the old, but on Tuesday night, it was straight up, well, vintage (GET IT?!). Aside from a few kids in tow and the random 20-something here and there, Local 662 was a living Lands End catalog and it was absolutely glorious. Something about grown white people cutting loose makes my soul smile, and Vintage Trouble just kept feedin’ it to em throughout the night.
Vintage Trouble absolutely owned it it as vocalist Ty Taylor wasted no time sweating through his suit, howling up and down the chromatic scale, and egging on the packed crowd to sing along, dance, love… all the nice things that make a live show, well, not-boring. Props to instrumentalists as well (which included Bloomingdale High School alum Michael Dill on bass), all of them seeming to barely even take a breath until reaching the break between their 90-minute set and the encore.
In the end, I realized what I thought I hated about Vintage Trouble is actually the reason I enjoyed them — no pretense. They’re brazen, but actively brazen, which is all too rare in my own little view of today’s musical world. It’s really all my fault, but when you’re bombarded with a steady internet stream of buzz bands seemingly hellbent on looking like (key phrase — 'looking like') they give less of a fuck than the one before, mimicking whatever, obscure, bygone genre that hasn’t been dog-piled onto yet, seeing a group like Vintage Trouble live gives you some good perspective on what makes any given music “good.” Perspective much needed when you pontificate on a strangers’ artistic worthiness to more strangers online like you’ve got any idea what you’re talking about.
This article appears in May 2-8, 2013.