David Mead does his best to rock the house. "Regardez ma uvula!" Durand invites the crowd. "Seriously," Brett insisted, "we didn't just shoot a whole roll of film of Dominique Durand! Here, for instance, we were taking a picture of that other guy, and she just jumped into the shot!"

One of the guiding principles of my life is that it should never cost more than fifteen dollars to see a show. There are, obviously, exceptions to this: I dropped a c-note to see Radiohead two nights in a row, but come on...it's Radiohead. Otherwise, though, this is a pretty solid rule. It was, therefore, with considerable trepidation that I eyed the eighteen-dollar charge to see Ivy at the Bowery Ballroom on October 18th. Could I justify this? Where the hell did they get off? I looked once again at the cover shot of lead singer Dominique Durand on my copy of Apartment Life and thought, okay, perhaps it's worth it.

For those of you not familiar with the high-end lounge-pop phenomenon that is Ivy, the band was formed when Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne got together with Andy Chase and composed ludicrously smooth pop confections over which to layer Ms. Durand's Galloise-smoke vocals. Apartment Life (which is the only one of their albums I own) is one of the most accurately-titled albums I've ever heard; every song is metropolitan, cosmopolitan, reminiscent of the urbanity that accrues to living in a classy building in a hip district of a major city. Every sound has been studied, processed, and projected with just the right shimmery veneer. The CD plays like spun sugar. I hadn't yet heard their latest, Long Distance.

I arrived at Bowery Ballroom just as David Mead finished his first tune, and my first impression was positive. He was backed by a bass player and drummer who were clearly hired guns, but they all played dogether quite well, and there was none of the stiffness that one sometimes associates with contracted backing musicians. Mead's delivery has a certain Sting-in-the-Police quality: high, sweet, and emphasizing each syllable. He also has a knack for combining the lead and rhythm functions of the guitar into one line. His songs, at least at first, seemed to me nimbly to negotiate the razor edge between honest confession and blatant commerciality. I later learned that his songs are featured in the teen flick Boys and Girls, and I have to say that this was singularly unsurprising. Every track seemed tailor-made for soundtrack inclusion. Standouts of his set included "Robert Bradley's Postcard": this song owed a considerable debt to Counting Crows (So I like Counting Crows. So kill me.) in both its rootsy sound and its melody line. Its success seemed of a piece; Mr. Mead was notably more successful with faster tempos.

My generally good feelings didn't last through his set; after a while, I was exasperated with the fact that every song he played was perfectly pleasant yet left no impression whatsoever. I couldn't hum one of his songs now if you put a gun to my head. Eventually, he bordered on self-parody. I swear that one of his songs had stolen the melody from that '80s ballad, "Even The Nights Are Better Since I Found You". He was so proud of this one that he performed this semi-purloined chorus a capella with the bass player. Whew. His last tune was sung sweetly over a simple, clean electric guitar line. It was by far his best performance of the evening, and almost made it all worth it. Still, Sting probably hides one good song on his recent solo albums, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get close enough to one of those steaming piles of crap to find out. That's essentially the way I felt about Mr. Mead when all was said and done, and I wasn't sad to see him go.

During the break, I surveyed the crowd. Black clothing a-go-go, as is to be expected from an NYC crowd. There did, however, seem to be a larger-tnan-normal percentage of people who looked as though they didn't attend many shows. You know the type; they talk to their friends during anything that's vaguely unfamiliar, and don't seem to know what to do with themselves when they're listening. The aura of the crowd was hip-urban-adult-conemporary; this is also, I suppose, a fair characterization of the band.

A short, fifteen-minute-or-so set change later, and Ivy took the stage. The stage band was composed of the three core members, joined by a lead guitarist and drummer, both of whom performed their jobs excellently. Front and center was, naturally, Ms. Durand, sporting a belly-revealing NYC t-shirt and the swaybacked Euro-model stance that I had always imagined she would have. The band kicked immediately into "This Is The Day", probably their most recognizable track, and the one that had been featured in There's Something About Mary. The song was well-executed, (at least from what I remember, as I spent the first few songs gazing too raptly at Ms. Durand to care much about what else might be going on) but suffered somewhat from a lack of horns; the band has often availed itself of large backing lineups in the studio, and therefore the audience expected a certain layered complexity from the live version that the group couldn't deliver. In addition, Ms. Durand's vocals were quite low for the first couple of songs, though the problem was eventually corrected. Still, it's not like this was a punk show. The band's strength is its extremely well-produced sound, and therefore any lapse therein was felt more deeply than might be the case with another band.

Ivy's set leaned heavily on Apartment Life, featuring "Ba Ba Ba", "Get Out Of The City", "Never Do That Again", and several others. This kind of setlist usually says to me that the band is not as happy with its newer material as with its older. Of course, if they played only the new album, I might accuse them of ignoring the wishes of their fans. The lesson to be learned here is that it is impossible to please rock critics. The songs from Long Distance that were featured were, for the most part, excellent. "Lucy Doesn't Love You" stood out particularly, with a chord progression that closely resembled the Velvet Underground classic "What Goes On", and a melody line that didn't resemble the earlier song at all. Many of the song titles seemed rather ridiculous coming from Ms. Durand's luscious lips. "I'm Not Afraid To Be Lonely"...no, I suppose she's not.

In the context of an hourlong set, it soon became obvious that many of the band's verses sound very similar. The trick lies in the choruses, which are not only very different from each other, but which retroactively recast the verses in their own likeness. Thus, each song sounds distinct, yet of a piece, with every other.

The final encore number was my favorite song by this band, "The Best Thing". The lyrics tell of a girl in a car, riding away from her suburban parents' home. Not all of the imagery is positive: "she covers up her scars". Still, the music rushes forward with a dizzying speed, and pulls you along with the girl's joyride. For the first time in the evening, the lights sprayed over the crowd, and it was at this moment that the band hit its high point. Then, they left the audience wanting more. Ivy were young urban musical professionals playing to a crowd of young urban professionals of various disciplines, and I think the latter got their money's worth. I know I did.

Article by Brett McCallon. Photos by F. Tanner Colby.