mewithoutYou/Foxing/Field Mouse
Saturday, July 4th 2015
Local 662, St. Petersburg, FL

Originally published at Suburban Apologist

Benjamin Franklin may well never have meant it, but the wilderness beats a safe imprisonment. That seems to be the message as mewithoutYou plan a trip to town with timid, roaming creatures such as Foxing, Field Mouse and Pale Horses (their new album) in tow. It's mewithoutZoo. 

Yet as many a would-be rebel has rationalised, in order to be free you must also be captive. As Field Mouse begin playing it is rather like a zoo at this crowded, sold out gig, surrounded by double the regular number of bars and hand-scrawled no smoking signs to accommodate the numbers. Will singer Rachel Browne be drowned out as their moniker implies, or is the name an ironic label over mob-silencing mammoth broadcasts? The weirdly satisfying truth turns out to be neither. While Browne has a soft voice it is by no means mousey; it rides a wave of keyboard and alt-rock guitar snarls comfortably and confidently. Think Garbage circa Version 2.0, the female nonchalance of L7 and a heavy shoegaze influence (maybe that ground level view is the origin of the name Field Mouse). With these comparisons it's needless to say that the band is cool, but The Local 662 is currently not and it's hard to tell whether your brain is meandering or the set itself.

Field Mouse dedicate their first night on the tour to Foxing, the Missouri band who had $27,000 of equipment and possessions stolen in Austin three days earlier. Information had been conflicting in the afternoon about whether the band would appear; having smashed a $5000 goal on gofundme in just 4 hours and then doubling it, there were hopes of a bittersweet performance. But, because of some opportunistic dildos in Texas, Foxing missed Florida entirely, picking themselves up only in time for the Atlanta date on the 6th. It's a shame that the promoter couldn't find a replacement local act for us. It's mainly a shame that the St. Pete audience was denied a chance to witness their combo of modern nightclub indie and emo-influenced post-rock (something like fellow Midwesterners Appleseed Cast). The band is about to spend August on a UK tour with their new equipment, where they will perhaps be glad to hear that despite a recent government wobble, foxhunting remains banned (their song titles and artwork seem to indicate an interest).

mewithoutYou are clearly also upset to be without Foxing. They open with a forlorn, slow, short intro (the Pale Horses title track) before anything vaguely hardcore; lay down some comforting bedding for all their animal friends in the form of 'Timothy Hay'; and play a few songs from the album that today we might title Catch For the Foxes Those Thieving Bastards. There's even a gap with a mic in the middle of the stage, not assigned to any of the members, as if representing something. Singer Aaron Weiss delivers the kind of lyrics that require quiet bedroom contemplation, not analysis in some rowdy bar. Still, the continuing lack of cooling in the 662 does make for a sort of heady dizziness that fits the bands sharp-angled style, even if the goal is simply to make people buy more beer. Both the bars seem oddly barren -- is art-core rock the nuanced descendant of straight edge? The audience is sober, still and enthusiastic as mewithoutYou utilise everything from a piano accordion to what from a distance appears to be a vodka bottle (but is most likely a tambourine stick). Weiss, as he has done periodically, does some triple spins as the set spirals towards an end, before finally using the open microphone.