Those of you fortunate enough to have snagged tickets to tonight’s Bright Eyes concert at The Waiting Room, here’s a sneak preview in the form of a review of Monday night’s show at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater from shepherd-express.com (full review here). The writer was less than impressed with Simon Joyner: “Numbingly dull singer-songwriter Simon Joyner has a voice like moss and quickly lost the crowd’s attention—which is saying something, since usually Pabst Theater audiences will politely sit through anything. ‘Conor, where are you?’ one woman in the balcony moaned after Joyner finished singing a particularly bland, flat song.” Ouch. On the other hand he was impressed with Capgun Coup after he figured out who they were. “Their name was utterly indecipherable—Captain Goo? Cat Fondue?” Cat Fondue is a frickin’ great name for a band, btw. “It’s not too much of a surprise that Oberst has taken such a liking to them, since they sound a lot like he used to before he tried to reinvent himself as a serious singer-songwriter: spazzy, poppy, catchy, wonderful.” He goes on to describe Capgun as sounding “like a young D.C. punk band doing an entire set of Clean covers.” As reported earlier, Dave Rawlings is playing guitar with Bright Eyes on this tour, replacing Mike Mogis, who I’m told is busy in the studio. Sounds like we’re in for a set list that’s a “career-spanning grab bag, heavy on Oberst’s louder, more charged material.” Opening tonight is Simon Joyner and Flowers Forever. 9 p.m. and yeah, it’s SOLD OUT.

Lazy-i content for the rest of the week is a real jumble. First, I plan on posting a review of tonight’s show online tomorrow. Despite doing a ton of work for The Reader this week, I don’t have much to show for it. This issue is the paper’s annual “music issue” that includes the usual list of the area’s top 20 bands (and the next 15). I wrote profiles of about six of them. This week’s column talks about the list, but is essentially a rehash of last year’s column. I’ll probably throw it online tomorrow, along with the list. The Reader‘s cover story is a focus on Omaha sound guys. The photo was taken on stage at Slowdown last last week. Inside are profiles of at least 10 local sound guys. When I approached Editor Andy Norman with the idea, I originally wanted the profiles to resemble trading cards — each with an action photo of a soundman at work, followed by key stats and comments. I have no idea how the final product will look. I interviewed seven sound engineers for the story: Jason Churchill, Dan Brennan, Jeremiah McIntyre, Brendan Greene-Walsh, Kevin Hiddleston, Jim Bogensberger and Jay Wilcher. Jeremy Buckley also interviewed a few sound guys in Lincoln. Neva Dinova’s Jake Bellows wrote the article’s introduction. I won’t be posting the profiles here, so you’ll have to pick up a copy of The Reader when it hits the stands tomorrow.

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