Grousing The Aisles: Live McLovins

McLovins – 12/13/2008 DAUD [FLAC, STREAM, MP3]

If you’ve browsed the message boards at Phantasy Tour for any period of time, you’ve probably noticed that the kidz on that board don’t agree on anything. That is until someone posted a video of a band of youngsters called McLovins tearing up Phish’s complex epic, You Enjoy Myself. Middle School student Jeff (axlovin), and high schoolers Jake (drumlovin) and Jason (basslovin) nail all of complicated structured parts and end the song with some tasty improv reminiscent of early ’90s Phish.

As the members of McLovins post more videos, the amount of kudos they’ve received increases exponentially with some PTers even traveling to catch the band’s live shows outside of Hartford. Yesterday, the first McLovins recording went up at Bt.etree.org. This crispy audience recording of the boys Saturday night show in Collinsville, CT shows that this band has plenty of room to improve, but are already better than most musicians twice their age.

Guitarist Axlovin shreds during covers of Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover, Weather Report’s Birdland and Santana’s Oye Como Va. The originals are better than expected with Drumlovin handling vocals quite capably while not missing a beat on the kit during Purple Trees. This tune’s lyrics are better than most of the drivel jambands come up with and the way the group works in Tweezer teases is pretty dope. McLovin’s need to learn to jam in the pocket more, but they’ve got plenty of time to work on that. Something tells us we haven’t heard the last of McLovins.