Live Review: Animal Collective, Black Dice @ State Theatre in St. Petersburg, FL (6/8/09)

Animal Collective is playing Bonnaroo this year, but they are playing a short set in the middle of the day against other acts I want to see, so I decided to make the trek down to St. Pete, Florida and catch a proper AnCo show. I got to the venue two hours before it opened and there was already a few people camping out. By the time they began letting people in, the lie was running around the block. The opener was Black Dice, and while I was excited to check them out, I was very disappointed with their show. I’m a huge fan of noise jamming bands, but that doesn’t mean all noise performances are created equal and I’ve seen too many great acts doing something similar. I feel like I could take a random person off the street, get them really drunk, and let them play with a studio’s worth of gadgets and they would do something more interesting than Black Dice did. I can’t recall ever witnessing something so over-the-top intense yet so boring. Clearly these guys are hype-by-association.


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