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On the SPIN Rooftop at CMJ With HOCKEY

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All the way from Portland, Oregon, HOCKEY took the stage at the latest edition of SPINhouse Live series on Thursday night, presented by VTech and rocked the crowd with their music and charm. This dance-rock band entertained an intimate crowd of 200 on the rooftop of SPIN’s downtown Manhattan office as part of last week’s CMJ Music Festival.

With a setlist with songs like “Work,” “3am Spanish,” “Learn to Lose,” “Song Away,” “Too Fake,” and “Put the Game Down,” Hockey’s set was as tight as their pants. Their six-song show pulled from the group’s recently released debut, Mind Chaos, combined retro dance-punk with synth-heavy New Wave. A mix of genres leading to a most contagious hodge-podge of song.

“I want to write a truthful song over an ’80’s groove,” singer Benjamin Grubin declared launching “Song Away.” And the band’s joyfully funkified set pretty much hit that goal.

“Work” had bassist Jeremy “Jerm” Reynolds showing off his prodigious 4-string skills amid countless flashing iPhones, while “Put the Game Down” alternated between a club-ready dance groove, courtesy of keyboardist Ryan Dolliver and drummer Anthony Stassi, and balls-out arena-rock, courtesy of Brian White’s schizoid guitar solo.

Grubin’s voice is a big, scraggly, soulful thing equally at home spittin’ pseudo-rhymes (as he did on “3am Spanish”) and belting the blues (as he did on “Learn to Lose”).

And Grubin is also a humble hipster. “We actually played on a roof once in San Francisco. It took us like two hours to move our stuff up there and there were like four people,” Grubin grinned. “This is much better.”

*photos by Emilia Costa and Ian Witlen


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This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 6:30 am and is filed under Concerts, Events, Festivals, Photo Gallery, VTech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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