12-10-2010 The Posies

Venue: Tivoli de Helling, Utrecht (The Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

The Posies are an American band, formed in 1987. Through the years they got into various tours and also in The Netherlands they have not stayed unnoticed. After doing some other gigs in the country before, now Utrecht was having its turn. Almost sold-out, a good evening out for the ones who have been up for the reputation of these silly American rockers.

As the band had recently released their seventh studio album, a tour would do good but halfway the concert vocalist/guitarist Ken Stringfellow tells that the audience doesn’t have to look for the album after the show as they are sold out on their merch. Seems like the band have got some successful nights before. He and other guitarist/vocalist Jon Auer seem quite on the talking mood anyway. In between the songs they could spend several minutes telling stories on whatever happened on the road before etc. So telling that their set took about two hours gives maybe a bit of a wrong image, but in between the talking the band actually played a whole lot of songs too. The band brings the beautiful Belle Hay on stage to join them for a song and Ken switches to keyboard for it. Not exactly something that made a big impression, Belle’s vocals seemed only substantially contributing to the song, but seemed a good way to create a change in the set.

What is fun about The Posies is the way to bring not only their humor in between the songs but it seemed to be a major part of what they do in general. In their songs they play around with the bigger names of the past, making it typical The Posies’ with the way they work with it. The band gets to a highlight at the end when things go a bit wilder, they play they music with some more aggression and when Jon smacks his guitar on the floor to leave the stage it is clear that a couple of snares are broken. It shows.. they are The Posies, not pussies.