The End's annual holiday season concert, the Deck the Hall Ball, has a small place in my heart—when I was 14, it was the first "real" rock concert I ever attended (that year's lineup: Radiohead, Jesus & Mary Chain, the Cramps, Butt Trumpet, and Sheryl Crow; the next year they had Jawbreaker, the Rentals, and Sonic Youth amongst others). Still, it's been a while since the station booked a show where I even wanted to see half the bands, so this year's line-up was a refreshing change, with fine bands Visqueen, Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, and Metric all playing conveniently before the regrettable 30 Seconds to Mars and the bafflingly popular alt Muse took the stage. Here then are some thoughts on those first four acts (photos of the entire show—including the headliners—coming soon).

Between the concrete-bunker design of the WaMu Theater and the likelihood of smaller acts at these shows getting short shrift in the sound-checking department, things can go a little off sound-wise for an opening band. So it was with local power pop act Visqueen (whose set started, btw, at freaking 5:10pm). Rachel Flotard and crew are clearly a tight, capable band, and Flotard does deliver some fine banter, but especially towards the back corners of the big room, their sound was a low, muddy mess, marred during "Tall Grass" by a kind of tearing static sound, like a chord being unplugged and left dangling halfway in. They also had an all but inaudible cellist onstage, for what that's worth. Bad sounds aside, Visqueen's sugary rock, more unapologetically reminiscent of '90s alternative radio fare than anything I've heard in a while, was kind of a perfect fit for this show. (Also, speaking of '90s alt radio, the album selections being playing on the PA before and then between the bands was kind of bizarre and awesome: Elastica, the Breeders—did the End even play those bands that much in their heydays? Whatever, it was nice to hear anyway.)

Like Visqueen, Vampire Weekend only got a 20 minute set last night, which gave them just enough time to play a half dozen songs. I was hoping they'd play like half new stuff (because the new stuff is really interesting and fun, and—brace yourself—you're going to be hearing a lot more about it here), but instead they only played a couple new songs and mostly relied on winning upbeat numbers from their debut. (One significant bummer about a 20 or even 30 minute set at shows like these is that it doesn't give the band much room to play anything but their most charged up, stadium-ready "hits," which can make everything seem kind of one-note and which really does a disservice to a bands' rangier material.) VW started with "Mansard Roof," and the sound was okay up front although still kind of bass heavy, and the kick drum sounded insane (the drummer motioned to the side of stage for it to be turned down after the first song). Keyboardist/arranger Rostam Batmanglij was wearing a sharp looking XX t-shirt. Next, they played new song "White Sky," a plinking, lightly grooving keyboard-led number marked by a chorus of high-reaching, slightly effeminate "woo-ooh-ooh"s. At this point, the sound is solid, but the lights are fucking nuts—all flashing, multicolored, weaving around everywhere but with not so much as a single spot on the band, who are nearly impossible to make out silhouettes. Frontman Ezra Koenig introduced the next song by saying, "This is a winter jam," and then the band launched into "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa." The drummer was really going for it on this one and was still way up in the (good, clean) mix, so that the tom fill right after Koenig sings the line about "Peter Gabriel too" sounded a little less Gabriel and a little more Phil Collins. Koenig asked if we were all "getting crunk off eggnog and feeling good, feeling warm," and then the band went on to play "Cousins," another new one, kind of the "A-Punk" of the new forthcoming Contra, all upbeat and galloping with a great fast-strumming surf guitar arpeggio on the chorus. Fittingly, the next song was "A-Punk," for which Koenig implored the audience to dance, noting that we had a long night ahead of us to warm up for. Weirdly, the little pre-chorus on the song, the part with the kind of warm ventilating keyboard trills, was totally empty of everything but the rhythm section. Batmanglij noted it was the band's last show of the year but that they'd be back in Seattle soon, and then Koenig introduced the next song, the rousing affluent ennui anthem "Walcott," as being about "being in Seattle, and getting out of Cape Cod." They ended it with a funny little riff, and that was it.

Phoenix, Metric, and why I split before 30 Seconds to Mars and Muse after the jump...

French band Phoenix came on to an intro of Pure Moods-style soft synths, and then launched right into "Lisztomania," sounding, once again, muddy as hell if you happened to be in the far reaches of the room (every time they came to a part where the bass dropped out, they sounded absolutely perfect, though.) The lights were still pretty nuts, too. Maybe by dint of not having a guitar to play, Phoenix's delicate-looking frontman was the first of the night to really engage and amp up the crowd, leaning into them, crouching down to sing from the foot of the stage, dancing and leading clap-alongs, eventually crowd surfing. The band played as a six piece, with two keyboardists as well as the usual guitar/bass/drums trio. They played one song I'm not sure I caught (maybe "Armistice") and then "Girlfriend," "Rome," and finally "1901" for the really big finish, capping it off by crowd surfing away while the band played a little reprise then coming back to the stage for one final crescendo, tossing and spiking the microphone.

Whereas Phoenix's synth intro was soft and lush, Metric's was noisy and overdriven, eventually resolving into the opening four note keyboard line of "Dead Disco," and setting the stage for a band every bit as engaging but with a markedly different attitude than Phoenix's laissez-faire cool. Metric's front-woman Emily Haines is awesome, a razor-sharp lyricist and a maniacal stage presence in a glitter-dress (she could be Schoolyard Heroes' hero), and her band's songs turn engaging interior anxieties into huge, arena-ready new wave rock anthems (the band is really just pro and polished as possible while still managing to sound slightly dangerous). They got super low and quiet on "Death Disco" before coming back into the bridge with a big crescendo, they played "Gimme Sympathy" to a weird anti-climax, they played "Sick Muse" (mic in one hand singing while banging on keys with the other hand is a fierce look) and "Gold Guns Girls" with Haines on guitar, the first band of the night to sound as big as the venue they were playing. They played "Help I'm Alive," by far the best song on their most recent album, with it's echoing vox on the verse ("I tremble"), its advancing synth chords and squalls of guitar. Haines introduced the next song, "Stadium Love" with a super hammy bit involving a lot of echo and a lot of enthusiasm, and it's kind of hard to tell if Haines learned her (really excellent) stage moves from, say, watching Kathleen Hannah in the "Bull in the Heather" video or from cheer camp (and I know, there's maybe not that much difference there to begin with). Haines is probably the closest thing to a riot grrrl that's going to grace the End's stage in the Liz Lemon era (and it's hard to read her lyrics, but to me they seem to express some pretty admirably complicated female perspectives), and really, we all could be doing much worse. Again, though, I wish the band had a longer set, so they could've dug into more varied material, like maybe the excellent slow-burning "Police and the Private." Ah, well.

Speaking of doing much worse, I split after Metric. No way was I going to watch Jared Leto's fading alt-hearthrob "emo" rock vanity project 30 Seconds to Mars (preferred burns: "More like 30 minutes to the bar" and/or "They're no Frozen Embryos"). For that matter, though like everyone in the audience was wearing matching Muse t-shirts, I cannot for the life of me see the appeal of that band. It's been suggested that they're sort of a middle-brow Radiohead, but I don't hear it (and, really, Radiohead aren't so esoteric that snowboarder bros can't dig them too). What I hear is simultaneously bloated and bland arena alt rock, with delusions of prog grandeur and just not quite enough of a sense of humor about itself to get by. To my mind the best things Muse has done is work with good remixers (Soulwax for one, even though their mix of "Muscle Museum" is like the least muscular remix work they've done) and do a cover Lightning Bolt's "Dracula Mountain" as their intro (and, yes, Muse certainly have the chops to pull the cover off—no one's doubting their technical proficiency here). So how was it, did I miss anything totally awesome from these headliners?