It's alright to want more than this.

Last night I drug my friend Eric to the hole in the wall Circle Bar to see the Castanets play. And I'll be damned if everyone else shouldn't be sad that they missed it. A San Francisco band, Lazarus, opened up. They played a spirited but very short set. It was too short for me to even really decide if I liked them or not. I far from hated them but I needed a little more to go on. You aren't going to sell any homemade cdrs by playing 5 songs to a roomful of strangers no matter how lanky and agonized 2/3rds of your band appears to be. Though, to Lazarus's credit, the lead singer did mention that they had been driving around like mad so perhaps they were just too tired to rock out for long.
The Castanets, which last night was just Raymond Raposa and Brigit DeCook, used the same instruments as Lazarus so they played almost immediately after the first set was finished. I think I like to describe the Castanets as Iron and Wine's younger, more impressionable brother. That's what they sound like. It's good and the style of music is similar but Castanets songs are not quite as mature as those of Iron and Wine.
Raymond stepped into the room, took his flip flops off, strapped a guitar on and pretty much started singing. He didn't use a microphone, just sang directly at the people who were sitting and standing before him. The room he was playing in is miniscule (smaller than the music room in mine and Marci's old apartment) so this worked. Unfortunately, the Castanets set was rather short as well, as are most of his songs but performed with all the soul and hand-wrung angst that I could ever ask for.
Anyone who loves Iron and Wine and the Mountain Goats should definitely seek the Castanets out. (I fall under this category.)