Gig review: Went, Cannot

I'm kinda late with this gig review, but I was extremely looking forward to writing some words for it. To be honest, I didn't plan to write about it actually, but after the show the urge to manifest my feelings on paper (monitor?) was just overabundant.

So, the gig took place a few days ago, namely on Thursday 19th May at KC "Grad" (Cultural center "City"). One other reviewed show was held at this venue, "Analena"/"36 Daggers" (found here by the way), though I just realized that I didn't quite talk about the very gig place in that writeup. Not much to say actually, it is quite a small venue, but with great sound and a high number of happenings. This is probably my favorite gig place at the moment, simply because it has enough space for the crowd and most importantly the acoustics of the club are good, so literally any type of music can be performed here and not get flawed by the venue, which tends to happen in Belgrade occasionally.
Anyways, the gig was about to start 10 PM sharp and I was panicking and bitching constantly due to the fact that both of my friends and myself were running late, being sabotaged by the stupid public transport which all but died that night. By some cosmic force or something the show was running late, so we got there just in time. "Went" was the first to kick off and I must say that they are the reason why I'm doing this review. I already wrote about two of their shows (their solo gig found here and the amazing gig with "Radio Burroughs" and "Petethepiratesquid" here) and most of you who read this blog already know my feelings about them. But every time I see them live I simply get blown away and it comes as such a wonderful surprise that this is "just" a local band. They have absolutely beautiful sets which really manage to invoke various emotions in the crowd. One minute they calm you down with gentle acoustic sounds, but after that they just pick you up with a frantic and pounding tune, ranging from something post rockish to garage/indie. "Went" just keeps bouncing you all over the room and personally I enjoy every second of it. I was extremely happy that I got to hear "Out", since it definitely is my favorite song (and thus the bitching about being late, since I knew this would be the second song played). Saying that it is just favorite is a serious understatement, that song is really a masterpiece and it is enough to say that the song alone got over 80 plays in my charts on "Last.fm" in the past seven days. Overall, I was melting in the front row during their part of the show and I really hope that "Went" manages to go out and see the world a bit, since it would be a real shame for a band of this caliber to stay on the "local" level.
After a short break, "Cannot" got on stage. I already heard this band in the same venue actually, in November last year when they had a promotion of their album called "3:33". I have to come clean regarding this four piece, this generally isn't my cup of tea as far as listening at home is concerned. This review won't be bashing this band however, since "Cannot" is a force to be reckoned with when witnessed live. For some reason, my thoughts are that the recordings didn't manage to fully grasp some traits which make this band good, so I will focus my critique on their live performance. They play a combination of grunge and alternative rock with a neat female vocal which gives the band a certain something. There is a lot of chaos going on in their music with quite a lot of shifts in melody, but a constant heavy and technical sound. In contrast to the bashing tones coming from the instruments, the vocal gives a soothing layer to everything. Of course, the vocal also has vast variations in singing/screaming style, so it really manages to create a full circle of sound, with equal parts of gentleness and aggression. In any case, they pulled off a very entertaining show both the first time when I saw them playing and now. They are quite talented musicians and I would really like to see them blossom even further.
Since this last part of the review is definitely written in a retarded manner I highly recommend that you check out "Cannot" on their website here. The site is still under construction, but you can head there and download "3:33", since it is completely free.