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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > October > 05 > Entry
Live review: Toadies
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
When the sun broke through the clouds Sunday afternoon, the massive crowd gathered at the Livestrong stage stripped off their shirts and painted each other with the ubiquitous festival mud in some tribal ritual akin to applying war paint. The Toadies must have planned on playing in the predicted downpour, though, as they opened with “I Come From the Water.” The joke was on them. Since the band actually comes from Fort Worth, they are probably familiar with the temperamental Texas weather, so a blown weather forecast couldn’t have been too surprising.
The band ripped their set wide open with the venomous “Song I Hate” and the viscous riff rock of “No Deliverance” from last year’s post-reunion album of the same name (minus longtime bassist Lisa Umbarger). It was the band’s trip back to 1998’s “Rubberneck,” though, that elicited massive sing-alongs during the “we will wake up” parts of “Tyler” and the “so help me, Jesus” parts of “Possum Kingdom,” the band’s big hit. The overhead crane camera was up and running and the video screen images vacillated between shots of the band and shots of the massive crowd crushed together in the mid-day sun.
After 15 years singer Todd Lewis still has that angst-ridden straining quality in his voice, sounding as if he was pushing the envelope of his vocal range on songs like “Push the Hand” and “Got a Heart.” The band turned in a loud, swampy set of nearly note-perfect renditions of their best songs, waking the crowd from their heat-induced lethargy and inspiring them to dance and embrace the musical and literal grunge.
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