Dave Hill is in a gang called the Dangerous Snakes Who Hate Bullshit. Other people are probably in it, too, but it’s mostly just Dave. That’s one Dave Hill fact. A second Dave Hill fact is that he opened for Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy on Friday, March 7th at the Royale in Boston, MA. Sometimes on guitar, sometimes fucking up the chords to Mother by Danzig. Sometimes it seemed like he was just spit-balling to the crowd. Every time he led with something, though, it resulted in a crowd of laughs. Playing through a few originals, a song about getting into his first and only fistfight with his girlfriend’s sister’s new boyfriend, Dave Hill warmed up the audience with a blend of tongue-in-cheek meets self-deprecating jokes and anecdotes. His signature, “Who me?” style played well to the often-too-serious Boston crowd. A local favorite was his barrage of MBTA-based pickup lines for any of the Gen-Xers in the audience looking to score. There was one about taking a particular train line end-to-end and “riding you all night for free.” Another capitalized on the frequent delays of the Greenline, or the lack thereof, when Dave so kindly stated the frequency at which the line actually comes. Winky face.
With the briefest of greetings, Michale Shannon, Jason Narducy and co., dove headfirst into Feeling Gravity’s Pull. The hypnotic and meandering track brought a somber warmth to a night that featured the full front-to-back cover of Fables Of The Reconstruction. Playing to a well-attended crowd, Shannon’s vocals offered a haunting take on an already eerie track. Keeping the banter to a minimum, it was on Driver 8 that the band fully exposed their sound and energy. With its spy-film guitar intro and the band’s more traditional folk sound, Shannon’s sensitive style exploded halfway through the song as the track broke wide-open. It was here the crowd picked up a bit as Shannon let loose across the stage. Bass heavy Old Man Kensey slowed things down to close out the first half of the set.
Jason Narducy took a moment to mention a limited show poster designed by Boston artist Nicole Anguish with proceeds going to the Abortion Access Front. Shannon made a brief quip about side one being finished as the band rolled into “side two” with Can’t Get There From Here. Considering Fables is only 40 minutes, the band kept the set going for another 22 tracks. A solid cover of Femme Fatale by the Velvet Underground segued into Romance. Covering the range of early R.E.M albums with songs like Wolves Lower, Gardening at Night, and 1,000,000 off 1982’s Chronic Town all the way through albums including Murmur, Reckoning, and up to Automatic For The People, New Adventures, and Up, Shannon and Narducy curated a setlist of tracks that focused on deepcuts and fan favorites not typically found on a so-called greatest hits tour. For the true-blue R.E.M fan, Friday’s gig was not a nostalgia trip, but a rare opportunity to hear the songs of rebellion and frustration of a certain generation performed with full hearts. For anyone who thought Dave Hill was at Park Street trying out his pickup lines, they were terribly wrong. Or, if he was, he came back to help close out the night with a cover of Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic. To those who thought Dave was just a Dangerous Snake – his playing on the track demonstrated just how much he hates bullshit.
