Sarahindie

We arrive in time for a band that I think is Harvard. (Dear promoters, if you want me to see all your openers, then schedule them so I can get out of work and still get dinner before the show.) They have the mumbley delivery and electronic beat of early decade hipster favorites like Piebald and Minus the Bear, but with way heavier guitars (possibly pasted in from a Mars Volta album). I had heard mixed things about them, but I like this sort of thing. These sorts of things. Whatever. It is hot as balls down here. Unfortunately, the songs often devolve into noodly guitars and chaos. The last song begins with noodling and chaos, so I’m lost before I am found. You can just imagine how it ends. A girl I presume to be the hottest band member’s girlfriend (hottest band member’s girlfriend sells the merch) is standing on a chair behind the merch table and dancing. She gets down during this song.

This feels like the most professional gig I’ve seen Empires play outside Chicago! It gives me hope. Also, Allison corroborates a popular theory when she says “Everyone involved with them is hot.” (The actual theory is that band leader Tom Conrad has no ugly friends.) I especially dig how bassist Connor Doyle is dressed as though he’s on summer break from Harvard in 1963. Super dapper.

I think the girl in front of me has a A Perfect Circle tattoo. Need to google that when I get home.

I won’t lie, I’ve heard singer Sean Van Vleet sound better. But considering that they’ve been touring pretty much uninterrupted for five or six weeks, he’s in great nick. Plus, he does this amazing thing. Instead of just being scratchy or unable to hit a note, he has this built-in vibrato. Also, it is so hot in here, that halfway through the set, the guitarists start to droop like the twentieth hour of a Depression dance-a-thon. But they keep trying! This money will be so important to their families! Like, ok, I do Excel for a living. I sit at a desk with a Nalgene full of water. And if it were this hot at my desk, I would go home in a tiff. The fact that they can still flail and give 110% is unbelievable. I need to sit down.

P.S. to Mom: I forgot to concert call, but they all want me to apologize to you about Sunday!

The Whigs are visually arresting. The lead singer plays with his guitar up under his armpit so he can lift his knee to waist height and hop around on one foot. The bassist looks like a young Iggy Pop. The drummer has teenage waster hair, the sort made famous by Shaun White. He looks like he should be loitering in front of a 7-11. Their music starts out a little bland, and gets quiet for one piano-driven song, but then they ramp up to a huge, rocking finish. Their undeniably Southern sound makes for a good match with the Kings, but their songs aren’t as smartly crafted, so my mind wanders.

The audience is adults of all ages. Lots of couples. But right in front of us is a bunch of skinny middle-aged women, the kind who proudly refer to themselves as MILFS. Their obnoxiousness speaks to a pride in who they are, a statement that, yeah, they’re hotter and more fun than everyone else. It makes me feel like I’m in not the right place. I’m 28, black, single, and live in a major city. I have nothing in common with these people except a shared love of this band, and with middle-aged couples, I can’t tell if they love the band or if it’s just an excuse for a grownups’ night. And I know that the other people at this show haven’t given me a moment’s thought. This is diametrically opposed to the way I felt at last week’s teen-heavy Empires shows. There, I know that the crowd loves the band in the intense way that only high schoolers can, but they are judging, looking for interlopers and sneering in the way only teenagers can.

I guess my long-winded point is that I never feel like I belong at shows, until the music starts, and then I stop giving a shit.

I can tell it’s going to be bright because the drums and all of the amps appear to be on a lighted riser. But then the backdrop falls and reveals a wall of old, rusty spotlights. I dig for my sunglasses.

The show starts with red plumes of fire and an outpouring of red smoke, and then their traditional opera entrance music. Then there’s more red smoke behind the band.

This show is horribly lit, but beautifully shot. There have to be six cameras either mounted on the stage or with cameramen and they’re shooting amazing close up black and white footage.

Dear Caleb Followill: Is your mom still cutting your hair, because it’s getting a little Ben Frankliny.

The first new song sounds like their older stuff, bouncy and grungy. I love it. It fits in the canon and no one can argue that they’ve changed or sold out.

The sunglasses come in handy when the wall of lights finally get going during “Molly’s Chambers.” Also, I remember when that song came out to a wall of indifference from America. It’s weird to have 5000 people screaming along with it.

So glad I didn’t wash my hair this morning. I’m gonna need to wash the smell of pot out of it tomorrow.

Matt Followill is wearing a plaid shirt with a hood. It looks like this is Seattle and 1996 and he’s running away from home.

The next new song they play has a real element of the 1960s teenage death song, with the swingy guitars and tight rhythm. A little departure! The one after that is a proper hard rocker. Jess and I are excited for the new album.

Caleb pleads vocal trouble on “4 Kicks”, which is worrisome because this is the second show of the tour.

He asks us to sing “Sex on Fire,” probably because he loathes this song, but ends up doing it himself.

For the final new song (for which the big array of lights opens and shit), which is a song about the South, they bring their buddies The Whigs on to play with them.

The encore gets raucous, with respectable members of the community losing their shit around us and the man in front us demanding we dance and the band playing their hearts out. At the end, little white fireworks pop oit of the lighting rig, probably to suggest the old fashioned klieg lights exploding from the sheer force of rock. And then I realize that nothing I can type will compare to seeing this band live and letting yourself have the time of your life.

I got an Infection once where it seemed that my heart had swollen and was beating against my ribs. It felt just like this.

I didn’t mean to liveblog this, and it wasn’t even supposed to be a concert really, but then it started and I needed to share.

Kristeen Young opens. It’s like if Bjork replaced Amanda Palmer in the Dresden Dolls. She’s wearing a body shaper under a sort of paper doll dress made of cut out body parts from magazines that have been laminated into a sheet. There’s a matching pointy hat. While I probably wouldn’t buy an album of her hooting and electronics, the point here is obviously the live show.

Also, I deeply covet her keyboard tricked out to look like the front of a classic car.

The crowd is doing that fill-in-from-the-back thing, which is awkward, as we are standing up against the stage.

Between the acts, I was thinking about why women don’t do the high spectacle of drag. The next performer is Cherie Lily and she does something called Houserobics. It seamlessly blends the mediocre songwriting of gay house with the timelessness of “Let’s Get Physical.” If she were a drag queen instead of a Jap from the metro area, this would be awesome. Also if she was a Real Housewife and this was her single, totes awesome. As it is, underwhelming. But her dancers are amazingsauce. And everyone on stage is wearing head to toe American Apparel. This isn’t surprising; I usually can’t figure out what anyone would wear AA for *besides* 80s themed aerobics. But because of the revealing-and-lycra-ness of AA’s clothing, we the audience get way too intimate with the group’s sacred spaces. Awks considering it’s barely 9pm.

I dared not take notes during Jujubee. I whispered my love of her to my friend Steven and she caught me. I got the evil eye. She made up for it with the fabulous eye later. She did Jazmine Sullivan’s “Bust Your Windows” and Whitney’s “It’s Not Right (But It’s Okay).” She taught me volumes about how you can look smaller through big hair and poofy skirt and she was fantastic.

If this was a concert, everyone I know would kill to go. But it isn’t. It’s the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack. It is available for 24 hours for free listening at Heatworld.

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