Photos + Review + Setlist: Trashcan Sinatras and Brookville at the Firebird, Saturday, August 8

Better Than: Sitting at home listening to the Postcard Records discography.

The Trashcan Sinatras had no idea how prescient the title of its early '90s hit single, "Obscurity Knocks," would prove to be. Nearly twenty years later, the Scottish band has endured bankruptcy, label mergers, label disinterest and other mishaps, all of which have kept it criminally under the radar in America.

Annie Zaleski

But you wouldn't have known the band's cult status on Saturday night at the Firebird, where a crowd of 100 people screamed, cheered and sang along with the strength of a mob ten times its size. (Actually, soccer hooliganism or a raucous night in a pub might be a better comparison.) Making its first area appearance since the early '90s, the Trashcans seemed grateful for, if not a little overwhelmed, by the rabid response.

The setlist stuck mostly to its new album, In the Music; its previous album, Weightlifting; and 1993's unheralded Brit-rock classic, I've Seen Everything. It's a testament to the band's songwriting talents (and consistency) that the new and the old meshed perfectly. Two electric guitars and an acoustic gave its songs a pastoral lilt, while preventing the folk-leaning numbers from sounding anemic. Music's slower ballads conjured the dreamiest parts of the Smiths' debut LP (although come to think of it, the faster tunes also resembled the Smiths).

Annie Zaleski

John Douglas