The Racquette

Issue date: 2/26/10 Section: A&E

Media Credit: Mark Stevens Math the Band plays energetically on the Hurley's stage.

Math the Band, an electro-pop band from Providence, Rhode Island, played to a meager crowd at Hurley's Nightclub on Friday, February 19. While the band played with a tenacity to be reckoned with, they hardly enticed the crowd into exuding little more than slight bobbing of heads and polite applause at the end of each tune.

Perhaps the catalyst to the lack of attendance at Math the Band's performance was their late arrival to Hurley's, which in turn caused the show to begin roughly an hour later than scheduled. However, when they finally began, guitarist Kevin Steinhauser, and keyboardist/percussionist Justine Mainville, started off with a vigor that has been exhibited by few bands at Hurley's.

It should also be noted that the band set up their equipment on the floor of Hurley's, to provide a more intimate atmosphere, one would presume. Despite their high-energy performance and amiable demeanor and humor between songs, Math the Band simply could not coax more bystanders on to the floor.

What irked me about Math the Band's performance was their reliance on an iPod that played backing tracks consisting of percussion, leads, and heavily layered rhythm synth parts. While this is somewhat acceptable for a small band who wants to keep their numbers down, I was disappointed to see that majority of the parts Steinhauser and Mainville played on their respective instruments were also doubled by the backing tracks, making it almost impossible to discern what was being played live and what was being reproduced flawlessly via iPod. At one point during the performance I heard an epic keyboard solo coming through the speakers, but was disappointed when I saw Mainville playing a much simpler and docile keyboard part that was obviously not producing the glorious keyboard shred streaming into the audience.

The vocals were very difficult to hear through the wall of sound Math the Band and their iPod were producing, and Steinhauser didn't help by pointing his red-tipped microphone everywhere but his mouth. He even accidentally turned off his microphone towards the beginning of a song and failed to realize why it wasn't working until the song was finished. I don't think the crowd realized his voice was missing anyway until it was brought to their attention.

Walking away from this show, I felt like I had listened to about an hour's worth (a generous estimate when factoring in the amount of time the band spent talking) of decent techno music coming from an iPod. While the music certainly was entertaining, by no means did it constitute an adequate performance. I feel the event would have been much more successful (and cost effective) had Hurley's simply played Math the Band's discography and held a dance party, especially with such awesome new black lights.

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