Last night I checked out Sea Wolf at Mercury Lounge. The band is led by Alex Brown Church, from Los Angeles, and the rest of the band is made up of musicians from Portland, OR and L.A. Most notably, the band includes a cellist, Joyce Lee, to add a little something different to their songs. The group’s second full-length album White Water, White Bloom was released in September. I wasn’t familiar with the songs, but I liked their sound. Church has a good voice and good hair, both very critical to a successful indie rock band. For some reason he reminded me of Matt Berninger of The National. I don’t know why though, and I kept thinking Church was going to break into “Mr. November”.

Before Sea Wolf’s set, Port O’Brien took the stage (after a mini dance jam in the back of crowd). Port O’Brien is a San Francisco based band led by Van Pierszalowski, who named the band after a bay on Kodiak Island where his parents met. As usual, Port O’Brien played an enthusiastic set and ended with their signature pots-and-pan-banging “I Woke Up Today”. In a clever move, the band whipped out the Mad Libs between songs, gathering adverbs and adjectives from the crowd. This helped both to erase awkward pauses/banter/crowd heckling/jokes and preserve Pierszalowski’s voice for its primary purpose of singing. Good move.

Here’s Pierszalowski reading the Mad Libs masterpiece:

If you didn’t get a ticket to the sold out Mercury Lounge show, you can still catch both bands at Union Hall in Brooklyn on Friday night.