Recap Ted Leo And The Pharmacists at High Noon Saloon

As Ted Leo wailed the chest-kicking first lines ("When the café doors exploded...") of set-opener “The Mighty Sparrow” Sunday night, the packed High Noon Saloon got an immediate taste of his ability to jam his impassioned DC hardcore influences through a Thin Lizzy lens. While this winning performance style somehow didn't get many in the crowd moving, Leo and his band The Pharmacists' 25-song set did inspire plenty of slightly reserved sing-a-longs.

Fists began pumping soon enough, though, when Leo riffed out the first chords of “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?” “It’s times like these when a neck looks for a knife / A wrist for a razor / A heart is longing for bullets,” Leo shouted as drummer Chris Wilson pummeled out the shuffling rhythm. After the catchy, mid-tempo rocker “Ativan Eyes,” Leo began complaining about the “toxic sweat” rolling into his eyes, which of course sparked a lengthy debate between Leo and guitarist James Canty about whether or not a band called Toxic Sweat already exists (if it doesn’t, it really should).

The show hit a brief snag halfway through, when one of Leo’s two amps began making loud crackling noises and smoking. As the sound guy rushed to the stage to check the damage, Leo looked understandably stressed. However, he didn’t let his fried amplifier ruin the evening. “I don’t need the amp and I don’t need the dog either. What? No one here has seen The Jerk? Anyways, at least you guys got through three-fourths of a set with two amps. Minneapolis? Tough shit.”

While the set featured plenty songs from the freshly released The Brutalist Bricks, it drew quite a bit from the Pharmacists’ last handful of albums. From the paranoid guitar attack on “The High Party” to the power-waltzing of set-closer “Biomusicology,” Leo and his Pharmacists nailed all of the screeching guitar solos, howling vocal lines, and hammering drum fills that push them far above so many other no-frills rock ‘n’ roll contemporaries.

However, two of the evening’s most shining moments came from the encore set, which Leo began solo. “Uh, sorry guys. I just need a minute to teach myself this song again,” Leo said as he searched his guitar for the chords of Irish band The Waterboys’ “Fisherman’s Blues.” Once he figured it out, he played a stunning cover, then played the first two-thirds of “Timorous Me” on his own, with his band coming back and punching in for the third verse. In a brain-melting display of tightness, the band closed its set by tightly sewing together a pair of songs with opposing tempo and feel. As the Pharmacists jammed on the end of "Walking To Do," Leo gave Wilson a quick head-nod and the entire band jumped straight into a final power-pop encore, "Last Days."

In the end, it doesn't matter whether or not Leo is obsessively tuning his guitar between songs, pleading with his guitar to stop humming, or muddling through amp problems. It's the way his thoughtful lyrics fill up a room, and how he hammers away at his guitar while belting out melodies, and how his classic hardcore intensity still tastefully bleeds into mellower soul-infused tracks like "One Polaroid A Day." The fans might have been keeping a lot of enthusiasm to themselves, but Leo's enormously heartfelt persona was nearly impossible to ignore.