Sarah Jaffe SOULED OUT in Fort Worth

Review by: Mac M.
Photos by: Jenna B Photography & Jaren Lorenz

Saturday night was a first for a few different things at Shipping and Receiving Bar in Fort Worth. For starters the newest neighborhood bar was kicking off a brand new music series called "South Main Saturday" which features well known music acts w/ great supporting bands at better than average ticket prices.

Another first would be Fairmount Wears' Pop Shop blog launch. On the surface you might think they are just another vintage fashion boutique but Maddison Piper and Lea Thom plan to take on and feature local businesses, art, events and the choice of the night, live music.

The third anomaly of the night, at least in our experience, was witnessing Sarah Jaffe's self admitted pre show excessive alcohol consumption, overindulgence of hot mic f-bombs and middle finger crowd salute... more on that later.

Kicking off the live sounds came opening act Ice Eater with a mix of pop, post-punk, industrial, shoegaze with a blond/dark haired front man, James Jardine, that could be mistaken for Adam Levine's doppelganger. Don't get it twisted however, if the genre descript. alone doesn't tip you off Ice Eater sounds nothing like Maroon 5 nor do they ever intend to try.

"Fort Tits", featured track off the split 7" 'Ice Eater / Son of Stan', laid down live with the same amount of metallic industrial pop vibe you get from the vinyl complete with the long sustained distorted guitar chords and looping synth effects.

Next up on the "cathouse stage" was Son of Stan. Levine's at birth separated brother claimed to see live cats hanging out under the outdoor stage. Pretty sure I saw one for a split second or at least wanted to see one and convinced myself it happen.

Stan's kid brought the energy up a notch or twelve with a shortened yet impressionable live set featuring a mix of Divorce Pop and upcoming SoS music placements like for the Showtime cable tv series Shameless.

Lastly the night's headliner, Sarah Jaffe, took to the stage for a quick setup to start out the live show everyone came to see and hear.

Jaffe ended the first song telling the crowd she played "80% of it in the wrong key". Followed by singling out a male in the crowd telling him "don't shake your head at me sir". The crowd was taking everything in stride with laughter and it all seemed light hearted however the conversation was not yet over.

About mid way into the second song Jaffe traded her singing for well mixed and dynamic f-bomb shouts into the microphone while continuing to play through the song. She suddenly stopped playing bass guitar long enough to flip off the crowd and/or the previously mentioned male, head shaking, accused target.

Wrapping up the second song Jaffe gave a quasi-apology saying "I'm sure you're a decent human being or maybe you're not" and "you didn't deserve that" best guess meaning the middle finger salute. She then went on to explain how hard it can be for musicians to play live music every night and have to show up five hours before show time and sometimes when alcohol is available during that time you partake a little too much.

All in all it wasn't a terrible live set by Jaffe in my opinion. I did end up leaving right after her third song simply because home was calling my name. Jaffe however felt the need to apologize to Fort Worth the next day on twitter offering to make it up to Cowtown.

Simply put, rock n' roll is still alive and did it's thing off South Main last Saturday!