Ted Leo and the Pharmacists played a free (for students, $5 for the rest of us) show at the University of Richmond campus Saturday night. When Ted Leo plays in town you go see him. It’s a rule. Look it up (and I know I broke that rule the last time he was in town, won’t happen again).
He has been on tour with The Duke Spirit and Les Aus. We caught the last 2 songs of the Les Aus set but they were enough to get me to buy the cd. It’s just 2 dudes, guitar and drums, but they make sweet, sweet noise. Plus they’re from Spain.
The Duke Spirit are a British quintet with a fuzzy guitar sound that took me a while to warm to. Liela Moss definitely has all of the ’sexy frontwoman’ moves down pat and the band backs her well, they just weren’t what I was expecting. The second half of their set was smoking hot so they went out on a high note.
The highlight of the night was when Ted Leo, who looked like death and still played a terrific set, closed a song with, “okay, so that’s usually the end of the set and then we walk offstage and then hope you liked us enough to cheer us back on stage for a couple more songs. If it’s okay with you guys, we’ll just skip that middle part and get right to the last 3 songs.” It was obvious the guy was hurting but he didn’t want to cheat the kids at the free show. Do you see why we have the Must See Ted Leo rule? And then to top his little speech, he closed the set with Suspect Device, an all-time classic.
Cuts Across The Land by The Duke Spirit is the currect single and a worthwhile listen. El Matagalls by Les Aus was one of the songs we caught from their set. It’s a raw drum/guitar freakout that knocked socks off in person. Suspect Device is something you need to hear. A lot.