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Like the news of their reunion, Shudder to Think’s entrance on the TD Music Stage on Saturday afternoon at the Virgin Music Festival was hardly theatrical. The band was formed in the late 1980s, and reached the height of their success in the 1990s, releasing six albums between 1989 and 1997, before getting back together for a few sets here and there within the last year. As for their entrance Saturday, it consisted of singer Craig Wedren asking the sound booth to “tell me when” as the band waited for their cue on stage.

Upon getting the go-ahead, Wedren introduced the band and promised to “bring the sunshine,” before launching into an energetic set. The crowd’s response was mixed, with only a handful of older fans near the stage that seemed to be familiar with the band’s discography. But Shudder to Think performed admirably for a band that presumably hadn’t played together much over the last ten years. With six records to get to over the course of a half-hour set, they stuck mostly to their (relative) hits: their critically acclaimed Pony Express Record got the most love, as the band played “Hit Liquor”, “Gang of 5″, “9 Fingers on You” and “X-French Tee Shirt” from the album.

While the audience was considerably thinner for their set than for Spiritualized’s a half-hour later, or even for The Midway State’s, earlier in the afternoon, that was more a testament to Shudder to Think’s deviation from the festival’s demographic, as a 90s punk band thrown amidst a lineup of more upbeat rock bands like MGMT or The Fratellis.

As Wedren downed wine straight from the bottle and gradually worked up sweat stains all over the front of his shirt (getting a little wetter on both counts?), his trademark vocals still displayed their pogo-stick ability to jump from octave to octave at will. The rest of his bandmates proved equally adept, providing a bombast of guitars and drums when necessary, while occasionally dropping out completely to let Wedren sing a cappella. They may not have been the band that many came to see, but they likely won a few fans and taught a lesson in indie-punk history.

Posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 4:44 pm by Luke Adams and is filed under VFest2008.

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