When I first heard We Shot The Moon’s new CD, “A Silver Lining”, I wasn’t too impressed. They sounded like All American Rejects meets Something Corporate meets The Starting Line meets The Academy Is. It sounded familiar in an ‘I’ve heard this before’ kind of way. Even though the CD was only OK, I decided to give them a second chance and see if they were better live. I had the opportunity to see them live at the Knitting Factory Saturday Sept. 19 and they were quite impressive.
The thing that We Shot the Moon had live that they did not have in their CD was a complete and jubilant personality. It was obvious that they had a lot of fun on stage performing together. Lead vocalist and pianist Jonathan Jones said he would describe their on-stage personality as being “comfortable” and “not too cool for school.”
While their personality was apparent from the beginning, it took a few songs for the band to get really comfortable. In the beginning, the transitions for Jones from standing and singing to playing piano and singing didn’t go very well. He kept unplugging the mic and wasn’t able to plug it back in quickly enough, but once he got the hang of it, there was a seamless transition between songs. There wasn’t a whole lot of crowd interaction, and not a lot of talking by Jones or anyone else in the band, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind so much.
Most of the band was truly having a good time, yet guitarist Jason De La Torre seemed to be a little bit out of place. Bassist Adam Lovell kept walking around the stage interacting with Jones and guitarist and vocalist Nathan Miller as drummer Trevor Faris was rocking out at the back of the stage; De La Torre mostly stood to the right of the stage in his own little corner, in his own little world.
Regardless of weird band nuances, the band’s upbeat personality gave their music the edge it needed to get completely stuck in my head. “Should Have Been,” “Woke Her Up” and “The Bright Side” are all from the new album and when performed on stage had great vocals and a catchy beat. They had a great pace throughout the show, mixing fast and slow songs, including the catchy with the slow and soulful.
We Shot The Moon gave a great show for their two-year anniversary. This San Diego native band brought their friendship and personality to the stage to perform their power pop. The show is totally worth it and although the CD doesn’t have the same personality the show does, it’s a good listen if you’re willing to work through the similarities to other bands.
