The Office
1/13/07 at Schubas in Chicago
Tomorrow Never Knows Festival Day Four
Chicago has a great local music scene and The Office is one of the bands that makes the community a little brighter and richer. With their catchy form of melodramatic popular song, each note played makes you bob your head to the melodies created while you feel happy to belong to the city.
Strangely enough, I had drastically underestimated the local five piece that is The Office when I saw them play The Metro with local shoegazers Airiel. This night was different as lead singer Scott Masson was clearly at his best. Walking onto stage with a bright red wig, he seemed more confident and at ease playing the Schubas music festival. The harmonizing was perfect, especially on songs like “If You Don’t Know By Now” and “Oh My.” Jessica Gonyea kept perfect timing between her tambourine and keyboard playing all swirling around her melodic backup vocals. She and Masson made a great dynamic pair with a positively charged sort of chemistry. Erica Corniel showed off her great drumming skills while Tom Smith and Alissa Noonan helped bring out some of those fantastic chord progressions and, in Noonan’s case, the bass lines. Positively winning us all over, it truly wasn’t until seeing them in this setting that I realized how much potential The Office has.