Margot & the Nuclear So and So's - Skully's, 10-19

At Sunday night’s Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s show--the band’s first in Columbus in quite a while--all the ingredients were there to make a memorable performance. The back of Skully’s was comfortably full with attentive attendees, the stage was set off nicely by an artful backdrop in the vein of Margot’s recent cover art, and all 10 players were audible in the near-perfect mix.

So my biggest complaint is that it didn’t last long enough. The band exited the stage after a strong 45-minute set. It wasn’t their fault, really. Skully’s had something else booked later that night. But it left me, and from what I could tell, most of the crowd, wanting more.

I imagine the band didn’t enjoy setting up for 10 people and then taking it all down 45 minutes later. But each musician played his or her role with aplomb. As I mentioned in last week’s preview, on record Margot has figured out how to avoid choking songs with overpowering arrangements--a common temptation for any band with more than five members. That strength carried over to the live show, as well, even with two extra people.

There was almost more of an emphasis on bandleader Richard Edwards’s words live. It wasn’t uncommon to have only two instruments playing at a time, or to see three tambourines and other hand percussion all going at once, which is comical, but also a good thing. You don’t need the brass on every song. (I’m still not sure what purpose the contraption with a big water bottle on top served, other than providing an elaborate stand for the attached triangles.)

Edwards had a serious disposition throughout the set, even when the violinist from Judgement Day (an opener I missed, along with David Vandervelde) was blowing bubbles in between maraca shakes. That could have been due to a cold, which made his voice a bit more nasally, but not detrimentally so.

Just as violinist/lap-steel player and hometown boy Erik Kang (Tiara, the Emerald Down) predicted last week, the band focused mostly on material from Animal!, Margot’s new album on Epic, as opposed to Not Animal, the other new album on Epic filled with songs of the record company’s choosing. The only two older songs of the night were “On a Freezing Chicago Street,” which had a beautiful, orchestral sound as Edwards conducted with his guitar, and “Skeleton Key,” one of my favorites from The Dust of Retreat. The strings were nice and pronounced on that one, too, but the slower, waltzy arrangement detracted from the propulsive feel the album version conveys.

“My Baby Shoots her Mouth Off” was chock-full of falsetto goodness, and I’m also partial to the back-and-forth vocals with keyboardist Emily Watson on “There’s Talk of Mine Shafts” and “Mariel’s Brazen Overture.” Other songs such as “O’ What a Nightmare!” and “A Children’s Crusade on Acid” showed how the band’s songwriting now focuses more on tunes with different movements that rely on a groove or feeling rather than traditional pop structures.

Animal! standout “As Tall as Cliffs” ended the abbreviated night on a loose, playful note, preceded by Edwards’s run-on send-off: “Sorry about the cold this is the last song hope you had fun bye.”

Oh, Margot. We hardly knew ye!