Oxford Collapse, Oakley Hall & The Constantines @ The Palace Tavern (CMJ Part 3)

On Friday night I headed out to Greenpoint to see see Oxford Collapse, Oakley Hall, and The Constantines at the Palace Tavern.
The first band to play was Oxford Collapse. I had never heard these guys before but had heard good things about them. They have pop punk meet the Talking Heads kind of thing going. They were restricted to only playing a 30 minutes set which kind of sucked because I would have like to have heard more. They are playing on Wednesday at the Mercury Lounge.



Oakley Hall was the only band on the showcase that I was familiar with. They play a kind of roots American rock’n’roll that is heavily influenced by musicians like Neil Young. I really enjoyed their performance a few months ago when they warmed up for Magnolia Electric Co.. whom also have a very similar sound. However there are more female lead vocals in Oakley Hall’s sound. There performance at the Palace tavern was good but suffered from the rent PA. At one point they tried to turn the sound up which in turn produced a serious amount of feedback. Oakley Hall also announced that they have a new cd coming out soon. I bought a pre release copy of the album called “Second Coming” it is remarkably good.



The final band of the evening was The Constantines. The Constantines played at least three times during CMJ. I was pretty tired by the time they came on so I moved to the back and sat for most of their set. I also figured I would see them on Saturday night at the Subpop showcase so I decided not to take any photos. It was pretty good show and their dark, moody, dancey songs got the crowd moving a little even though a lot of people had moved to the bar area to drink the very inexpensive beer. Overall it was fun evening