But first, SFist was sad that we missed two of the openers: Scrabbel, who we’ve only heard great things about, and THe Octopus Project whose album "One Ten Hundred Thousand" has made for some good listening during the last month. We did manage to make it there in time for Aqueduct, whom SFist has made no secret of loving. In fact, it was at Noise Pop 2005 that we first saw them, so last night marked an anniversary of sorts. In the last year, Aqueduct has become increasingly visible with Jaguar using their stuff, and our pals at Austinist following our lead on interviewing them. Their increasing popularity was evidenced by all the concert goers who were singing along during their set. Although Aqueduct didn’t perform their gangster rap covers that first grabbed our attention, they threw in several new songs that they’ll be heading into the studio to record soon.
The crowd last night was clearly full of Rogue Wave fans, which makes sense, since they are a local band on the verge of making it really big. Although the die hard fans in the crowd definitely got what they came for--Rogue Wave’s distinctive sound and song compositions, SFist had a hard time moving past the start of their show. This was the first time we had really heard Rogue Wave, let alone seen them live, we’ll just say that unless you’re Metallica, or someone else who could handily kick the audience’s collective asses, don’t begin your show with feedback. Just don’t. Also a few bands, like The Polyphonic Spree, can have matching weird outfits as part of their shticks. White shirts and white jeans aren’t really a style statement, and frankly not that cool looking either. Once they got past that rough start (which in all fairness that didn’t seem to be off-putting to anyone besides SFist) Rogue Wave performed well, leaving SFist wondering if maybe we should try listening to their stuff on our own terms, sans matching outfits.