I saw Mando Diao live with my ex-girlfriend (the most recent one). They played at the Troubadour, which already soured my expectations considerably because I have seen plenty of good bands sound completely awful at Troubadour (to list: Local H, The National, Mando Diao, We Barbarians) but to be fair I have also heard one really shitty band sound really shitty there (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) so I don't think I can blame the Troubadour for that one.

Anyway, the Troubadour sucks shit. The crowd that goes there sucks shit, and the sound quality at the venue sucks shit. The only thing good about the Troubadour is you can climb a staircase and get a decent aerial view of the band, it's just too bad that the sound is even worse up there.

Mando Diao, while not being at all my "cup of tea" (pretty sure, aside from Kings of Leon, this is the only concert that my ex picked out of all the shows we went to) because I'm not into the whole bouncey 66%-swedish crazy rock music The Mando Tokyo Police Hives Diao Club, were a lot of fun to see live.

The ladies all scream and the twiggy swedes in their skinny jeans gyrate their hips and wail intelligibly into their microphones and it's all very... rock 'n roll, like early Beatles, and I guess I can see the joy in that. It's fun, loud, and crazy, and the guys might not be hot really but they sure do know how to rock out on stage and fool everyone into thinking they are just by the power of stage presence.

So, good for them.

Also, fuck them.

I've enjoyed this song for a while but compared to how it sounded live (which, aside from this next peeve, didn't really sound like this at all) it always came through a little muddled in the recording. That was until I spent a near grand on a new sound system for my car and now it sounds fucking awesome. Like, really fucking awesome.

I've found that a lot of indie music sounds like shit through nice speakers. The Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, while being an amazing album that everyone should fall to their knees and worship, is one of the most horribly mixed pieces of shit I have ever heard. I've got a pair of Sennheiser HD-580s going through a custom built amp and it makes The Beatles sound like they're stroking your dick (or vag) while playing music only to you, but Neon Bible ends up sounding like the whole band is playing underwater. I guess maybe that's the point, lousy production, it's artistic, but you know what, I want to actually hear the instruments clearly if I have nice gear. An album shouldn't be mixed to sound like it's coming out of PC speakers right off the CD.

Sometimes it's just a lack of dynamics: I played The White Stripes' "The Nurse" through my new speakers because I figured there'd be a lot there to hear between the marimbas, the tape splices, Meg White's drum blasts, Jack White's nuanced vocal, but in actuality it just sounds kind of crap. Very dull, no real texture to the whole thing. I know they recorded the album on 4-track, but how many fucking awesome albums are there out there recorded on 4-track? (The Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle?)

So, thank you Mando Diao, for composing a track so lavishly layered with instruments and so expertly recorded and mastered that you make my new stereo sound like it's worth the money I dropped on it.