CMJ Music Marathon Day 1: Wild Flag

The professor for my Japanese class took us all out for sushi one night and, at the dinner, he told me his approach to eating sushi. He said that no matter what strange things he ordered he would always bookend his meal with tuna or salmon; he wanted to start with something he knew he liked before he started experimenting. Before I even realized CMJ was this week I bought my ticket to see Wild Flag for the first night, which ended up meaning my CMJ experience would be a lot like Sensei Tangeman’s sushi dinners.

There’s nothing challenging or particularly new about Wild Flag, the super group whose debut album came out last month, but compared to their first shows in March the band has become even more locked-in, developing an easy chemistry that really shined at Bowery Ballroom last night. Songs like “Electric Band” and album highlight “Romance” crackled with punk energy as the band’s winning blend of 1960′s psychedelic and 1990′s riot punk carried through a set that covered most of the band’s self-titled debut. There will be bands that disappoint and surprise me, that come out of nowhere or crash from an excess weight of hype, but hopefully one or two can be as much fun as Wild Flag.

Since it was the Merge Showcase, the show itself featured a short set from Hospitality, a new signee to the label that showed a great deal of promise. Their music was meat-and-potatoes indie, with a little Stereolab and a little Built to Spill, but it was a perfect, if perfunctory, set-up for Wild Flag.