Brittany and Alicia performing Edit Edit Edit
The Van's Warped Tour has always been a grab bag for anyone who goes. Normally, you have two or three bands you want to see and the rest you're able to tolerate ... but ultimately could care less about. Then there are the years where you happen upon a band you'd never heard before and instantly become a fan. The best place to discover new music, at Warped Tour anyways, is the Kevin Says Stage.
This year, Dayton band Vanity Theft performed on the Kevin Says Stage just as the doors for the show opened. Being the first band to go is always a challenge, being the first band people are going to hear upon coming through the door can crank the nerves of young bands to a tipping point. However, Vanity Theft handled both of these situations with a style typically associated with a band that has been making music for more than a decade. Not letting the pressure get to them, the ladies of Vanity Theft were able to put together a great set of music. They also must have a sound that people from various musical backgrounds can get into, because there were people with t-shirts glorifying the latest trends in emo and pop-punk, people with mohawks and old school punk t-shirts, and parents accompanying their young children all stopping to catch a glimpse of this band they were hearing.
Gathering a diverse crowd at this show is always a challenge, as most people already know who they want to see. However, being an Indie Dance Pop band made entirely of girls on a tour that is generally dominated by males playing some variation of loud distorted music makes them just enough of an annomally that people will pay attention to them. The band used this to their advantage, playing to the crowd and engaging in a bit more stage banter than I'd heard from them previously. Which is what seperates them from so many of their peers, both in Dayton and at Warped Tour, these girls appear fearless to all but their closest fans. They exhibit a level of show-womanship that most bands don't pull off when they are playing to a crowd that is several times bigger than anyone they've ever seen before.
The band played almost half of their latest album Postscript: Pace Yourself, an album which they've mastered to the point of making old songs sound new again by adding flair to them they couldn't before. This is the kind of comfort, that can leave some bands treading water at live shows ... being able to overcome that though is a testament to band chemistry and musical ability. Those two things are what is going to seperate Vanity Theft from a lot the bands they share a stage with.
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