Back from Thanksgiving, a small pocket of students noticed an even smaller number of flyers hanging up around campus, announcing that Ted Leo and the Pharmacists would be playing at the ’Sco on Monday night. While few and far between, the flyers offered what could have cured many Oberlin students of their winter doldrums: a few hours of catchy, smart pop-rock. Unfortunately, the flyers were ignored, and a show that could have lifted a lot more spirits was severely dampened by poor publicity and an audience that was too small to be energizing, too awkward to be intimate.
After schizophrenic openers French Toast had finished their set, the D.C. quintet Ted Leo and the Pharmacists strode onto the stage, intent on waking up their distracted audience.
Based purely on the content of the their set — a smart distillation of sweet power-pop and punk — the group should have succeeded. Each song was well put together as the two guitars, bass, keys, drums and Leo’s young-at-heart voice mixed into distinct servings of sunny rock ‘n’ roll that was at once intense and easy. But most of the audience seemed unfamiliar with the group’s material, and, with the exception of the band’s instant crowd winners – “Under the Hedge,” which came toward the end of their set and “Timorous Me,” which they played for an encore — it took people too much time to get into most of the songs. A few times, Leo tried to warm up the crowd with chatter, but after lukewarm responses, the battle-tested performer wisely scaled back a bit, and spent his next few trips to the microphone talking more for the fun of it than with any specific purpose.
Eventually, the crowd managed to develop a taste for the quintet’s stylings and started getting more and more into the performance, but they did so just as the Pharmacists were starting to look spent. Whenever the crowd’s response grew louder, the Pharmacists sagged a little more, unable to take the applause as anything more than a consolation prize for their long trip through the snow.
Around 12:30, as the band finished off its underappreciated set, the crowd begged for an encore, realizing too late the opportunity they had lost.