Review: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin at Bang Bang Club, October 22nd 2010.
You gotta love their name. Or at least smile when you hear it. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, indie pop band from Springfield, Missouri, who visited Bang Bang Club Friday night as part of their 23-gigs-in-25-days European tour.
Even though it was only half full when the group started out with Some Constellation from their 2008 album Pershing, Bang Bang Club never really feels empty. They continued with Everlyn, the first of the night’s sample from the recently released album Let It Sway. After another few songs the venue started to fill up and SSLYBY filled the room with sweet na-na-na’s and hand claps and songs from all of their three albums. Half way through the concert they did a little rotation, Phil Dickey left the drums for Jonathan James, who left the bass for John Robert, who gave the microphone to Dickey, while Will Knauer stayed with his guitar. Which worked well, especially after they’d each had some time to warm up in their respective new roles.
Throughout the concert the crowd went from being a few hesitating dancers and too many couples kissing, to being a cheering, clapping, and whistling-for-more audience. The 
band seemed a bit surprised by all this excitement. They played no less than four encores and simply ended the concert with a ”we love you!”.
So the atmosphere was better than good. And I like the intimacy at Bang Bang Club. I like being so close to the band, I like the dim club lighting, the dense crowd and the sweat, but one thing I don’t like is the sound. It’s got a real live feel to it, which can be charming, but it can also just end up being too loud and too lo-fi and with an already lo-fi sounding band like SSLYBY, it becomes lo-lo-fi. As in too muddy and high school band like (As in bad). On top of that I found myself wondering if the slightly out of tune singing and the unsteady changes of tempo were all on purpose.
They have some great melodic pop songs, but I found them to be not brilliant musicians. They have nice voices, but they are not brilliant singers. But even though the sound was everything but good, they really got a party going Friday night. And I’m sure that someone still loves them for that. I do, but for now I prefer the recordings.
