“Saturday Night Live” Makes Yet Another Decent Band Sound Like Ass
I like “Golden Age.” The point on the chorus when the horns come in is a great little moment and does really pick everything up a bit. But on SNL, the brass obliterated everything else in its path. Worse, they seemed to be either out-of-tune or differently arranged, clashing painfully with the vocal line. Who knows why—maybe the monitors were off, maybe there was an ill-advised last-minute change—but it turned the triumphant energy of the song into something that more closely resembled a performance by an experimental high school marching band. This seems to be a regular problem for SNL, but why? The show has a reputation as one of the few places still booking interesting musical acts, but then whoever’s working the sound can’t seem to let the quality translate. What gives?