New York, April 7, 2007 – "I wish you could do this," Adult.'s Nicola Kuperus said to the audience at newish Brooklyn venue Studio B Saturday night, referring to the very act for which she was responsible: singing. This pronouncement, half joking, half serious, suggested her heart wasn't in the show, despite the sizable audience and the technology marshaled for the evening's bill. If it wasn't for the phalanx of Moog and Casio synthesizers, Powerbooks, and sundry electronica that kept Adult.'s weird strain of electroclash music both in tempo and pounding relentlessly, then Nicola's weariness might have been more apparent to the audience. However, the other half of Adult. – and Nicola's better half (they're married) – Adam Lee Miller tended the keyboards, computers, and even played a bass guitar occasionally, leaving Nicola free to wander the stage, sipping from bottles of Stella Artois and (reluctantly) singing and screaming into a microphone.

Seasoned road veterans (they played 81 shows over a year's span!), Adult.'s underpar performance was all the more mystifying given the obsessive detail that goes into the writing and production of the Detroit duo's studio recordings -- not to mention their insistence on following their name with a period. Why Bother?, released in March on Thrill Jockey is self-described as "their fourth and most focused." This might well be correct, but it is clear to this reviewer that their stage show lacked the maniacal focus of their recordings.

It is not that the crowd wasn't enthused - Nicola's climbing down from the stage and dragging the microphone cable through the crowd to sing from the floor still prompted frenzied dancing by the crowd - despite the stunt being a well-worn aspect of Nicola's concert repertoire for more than two years. After fifty-five minutes of music Adult. couldn't even be bothered to play an encore for their adoring fans. Considering their lackluster performance, this refusal was almost commendable. - Damien Neva