Father John Misty at The Tabernacle, Atlanta, April 29, 2016

We've already seen Father John Misty perform in Atlanta several times, at The Masquerade, Terminal West, and Variety Playhouse, but his performance last evening at The Tabernacle was by far the best we've seen yet, a solid set by a natural-born entertainer comfortable with and confident in his material and rapport with the audience.

The opener, a duo called Tess & Dave, resembled nothing so much as a bad Father John parody act, accompanied by a singing mime for some reason. 

The mime's biggest applause came when she returned to the stage in a different outfit ("Wow, she changed her clothes!").  Dave did most of the heavy lifting, and they sang to recorded music for the first part of their set, then to their own guitar accompaniment, and finally with some keyboards and and percussion.  They danced some, poorly, and reminded me of nothing more than what one might expect from a Father John Misty "tribute" act playing at the Long Beach Marriott.  The most surprising thing was that Josh Tillman allowed them to be his opening act.

FJM and company came on stage at 9:00 pm sharp, and as it turns out, both Tess and Dave are a part of his touring band, so that explains that.   He started his set right off with Every Man Needs A Companion, followed by Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and had the entire audience right in the palm of his hand for the next 90 minutes or so. 

In previous Father John shows, Tillman undermined his own performance with self-effacing stage banter and goofy stage antics.  He still danced around like a goofus at times, but he seemed much more focused on playing his music and delivering his songs than in the past, and the result was the best FJM show we've seen yet.  The change in his delivery might have been because last night's set was being webcast live by Yahoo Music, although that might just as easily have been call for even more foolishness than before, but it's more likely that Tillman has finally found a connection through his songs with the audience, and is now more than glad to share the musical experience with the crowd. 

This isn't to say that the show didn't have its moments of patented Josh Tillman playfulness, and sometimes he seemed aloof and above it all, and at other times as passionate as a Memphis soul singer, and at still other times an excitable rock 'n' roller. 

Here's a little sample, part of my very occasional 30 Seconds of . . . video series, of Father John during his song Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow, that gives you an idea of how skillful he was at manipulating the audience. 

I didn't keep track, but I think he covered just about every song from his two albums, Fear Fun and I Love You Honeybear.  I honestly can't think of anything he didn't play.  And there were more fun and sublime moments than I recall, such as getting the audience to contribute the laugh track at the appropriate part of Bored In The USA. or the sing-alongs during Honeybear and When You're Smiling and Astride Me.

For his encore, he came on stage alone and played a lovely unaccompanied version of his ballad I Went To The Store, the most unapologetically romantic song off I Love You Honeybear, but then the band joined him on stage and surprised just about everybody, or at least me, by performing a faithful and scorching cover of Nine Inch Nails' Closer ("I want to fuck you like an animal"), even falling to his knees as he delivered the line "You get me closer to god."  As you can imagine, that got the audience going, and he even leaned off the stage to touch the audience and let them touch him (I got to touch his arm and hair).  

At the end of all that frenzy, he played a loud, noisy, almost punk version of The Ideal Husband from Honeybear, working the audience up even more, and when the house lights finally came on, Tillman danced on the stage as Drake's hip-hop anthem Legend off of If You're Reading This It's Too Late played over the PA system.  He encouraged the audience to dance along too, and when he had all of us dancing, Father John finally left the stage and let the dance party continue on its own.

This is going to be a hard show to top.  Father John just set the bar pretty goddamn high.

Night Two: The Decemberists at The Tabernacle, Atlanta - April 11, 2015

Night two of the two-night stand - same venue, same bands, different experience, but just as good.

First of all, no apocalyptic downpours just before the show, no loss of electricity at home, no gridlocked, downtown traffic.  I arrived at the show in a much better frame of mind, and got there early enough to get a significantly better spot, about three rows of people back from the stage, as opposed to the approximately 10 rows of the night before.

Just like Friday night, Alvvays took the stage a few minutes before 8:00, and they played a nearly identical set.  I didn't notice any difference, except possibly in Molly Rankin's stage banter.

Just like Friday night, The Decemberists took that stage at 9:00 pm sharp, introduced by a short excerpt from some Bolshevik anthem or another.  Once again, Colin Meloy initially took the stage solo to perform The Singer Addresses His Audience from 2015's What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, and once again the band members individually came on stage at their appropriate times to join in on the song.

Differences is the set list manifest themselves by the second song of the set, which last night was Cavalry Captain, the second song of What a Terrible World. A trumpet player, who never once graced the stage the night before, appeared at the far edge of the stage to provide the horn part to the song.

There were a few other differences as well, including the omission of Philomena, my least favorite song from What a Terrible World and quite possibly my least favorite Decemberists song.  They also performed different portions of The Crane's Wife and The Hazards of Love.  On the latter, Kelly Hogan provided the vocals for Margaret In The Taiga, whereas the previous night her companion backup singer Rachel Flotard just about brought down the house as The Forest Queen during The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid. Fortunately, the Hazards of Love passages in both shows concluded with The Rake's Song and Meloy orchestrating an audience hand-clapping performance.    

The overall performances from both nights were so good and there were enough differences in the set lists that going to hear the same two bands on two consecutive nights didn't seem at all repetitious.  In fact, not only did it actually enhance both nights (anticipating the next night on the first, and recalling the first night on the second) but I can't imagine a better way to have experienced the event.

I brought along my little point-and-shoot digital camera for night two, so I hope that the quality of my pictures from last night's show is a little bit better than that of the first night.

And finally, this:

The Decemberists at The Tabernacle, Atlanta - April 10, 2015

Where do I even start?  I'll say right from the outset that this was one of the best shows ever.  I've wanted to see The Decemberists for years, but ironically, the last time they played Atlanta (actually, the misbegotten, suburban Cobb Energy Center), I was in their hometown of Portland, Oregon for MFNW (RIP).  Our paths have managed to miss each other ever since, and then the band took a hiatus for a couple years.  I managed to catch most of the members performing as Black Prairie at Eddie's Attic during that hiatus, and saw frontman Colin Meloy perform a set of Decemberist songs at Variety Playhouse, but seeing them all together was one of my "bucket list" wishes, one that was finally granted last night.  

It was worth the wait.  

That's the positive way to begin.  Here's the negative:  the 60 or 90 or so minutes before the show began were some of the most miserable of this still young year.  Everything was fine until about 6:30 pm when I stepped out of an Arden's Garden store with a fresh smoothie in hand and into one of the most intense downpours I can remember.  I got totally soaked running the 15 or so feet from the store's door to my car, and when I got home, of course the electricity was out (a tree fell on Collier Road during the downpour).  I changed my clothes in the near dark, managed to find my ticket, and headed toward the Tabernacle, only to get stuck in gridlocked downtown traffic.  I don't know what else was going on in town last night (there was a Braves' game, but I was on the opposite side of town from the stadium),  but the cars were simply not  moving.  The traffic light in front of me changed about a half dozen times, but not one car managed to make it through.  I finally managed to make a U-turn out of the line of cars and drive around in only slightly better downtown traffic until I finally found a parking garage several blocks away from where I wanted to be, but I pulled in anyway figuring I was better off on foot than in that gridlock.

Even Molly Rankin, frontwoman for show-opener Alvvays, asked the audience what was up with people from Atlanta just leaving their cars in lanes of traffic, backing everything up.  

We've seen Toronto's Alvvays once before, opening for Yuck at The Earl.  This, obviously, was a far larger venue for the band, and they filled the stage nicely, seeming not just comfortable but downright accustomed to playing before such a large crowd.  

For some reason, the Tabernacle backlit Alvvays' entire performance with purple lights aimed at the audience which, in combo with the post-deluge humidity, cast a haze over the stage making normal photography nearly impossible (even with my brand-new iPhone 6). 

Lighting was better for The Decemberists - in fact, the stage set was downright lovely.   The backdrop was the cover of their new album, What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, and just by subtle manipulations of the light, different dominant colors emerged from the quilt-like backdrop and onto the performers themselves.

The show opened with Meloy on stage alone, performing the new album's opener The Singer Addresses His Audience.  By the time he  got to the first chorus, he was jointed on stage by backup singers Rachel Flotard and our old friend Kelly Hogan (familiar to many as Neko Case's supporting vocalist and on-stage foil).  The rest of the band came on stage at various moments, bringing the song to a joyful climax not hinted at on the album version.

What A Terrible World is not The Decemberists' best album, but it's been growing on me with each successive listen.  However, any concerns that the band was only going to play songs from the new album were quickly dispelled when they launched into back-to-back renditions of Down By The Water and Calamity Song from 2011's The King Is Dead, and the remaining set included songs from nearly every phase of the band's long history, even going back to Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect from 2002's Castaways and Cutouts. 

A sure sign that you're in the hands of a great band is when you find yourself thinking "This is my favorite song of theirs" over and over again as each successive song kicks off.  Almost the entire night was like that for me.

Those "this-is-their-best-song" moments may have been frequent, but one of the stand-out moments was their performance of The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid from 2009's The Hazards of Love, followed immediately by an appropriately  raucous and rousing version of The Rake's Song.

The most notable aspect of the recorded version of The Wanting Comes In Waves is of course Shara Worden's guest vocals, and backup singer Rachel Flotard absolutely nailed it.  Worden left some pretty big shoes to fill with her powerful singing in the role as The Forest Queen, but Flotard managed to not only fill those shoes, but deliver a live performance that was almost indistinguishable from Worden's recorded version.  I doubt I was the only one with goose-bumps on my arms during the song. 

There were almost too many such stand-out moments to recall, but other highlights included 16 Military Wives, Make You Better, and Los Angeles I'm Yours.  Meloy announced early in the show that the set would by "a journey" by both band and audience, and the nearly 90-minute show felt exactly like that.

To my surprise, the band didn't perform Lake Song, the stand-out song from their What A Terrible World.  I also kept waiting to hear the opening to June Hymn from The King Is Dead, but never did. These are not complaints, though - it's always best for artists to leave their audience wanting a little more.  

Hilariously, during the encore-ending Mariner's Revenge Song, Hogan and Flotard carried a huge puppet whale onto the stage, which ate all the band except Meloy, the song's narrator.  The song also featured audience participation (a timed scream at the appearance of the whale), lots of  hammy, campy mugging by the band, and a joyous, rocking finale to close out the evening.  

The electricity was still out at my house when I got home, so I headed back out to a local dive bar and watched the 10 extra innings of the 19-inning marathon Red Sox/Yankees baseball game until well after 2 a.m.  The Red Sox won with a Mookie Betts fly ball, capping off a terrific evening that started horribly but wound up ending triumphantly.  And when I got back home again from watching the game, the electricity was finally back on.   

But here's the best part: last night was only the first of a two-night stand, and I get to experience The Decemberists' show again tonight!

The Decemberists Do Morning Becomes Eclectic

The new Decemberists' record, What a Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, hasn't been getting the best of reviews, and frankly it isn't their best album, but it's still The Decemberists and there are at least two or three stand-out songs on the album. Coupled with their extensive back catalog, as well as creative covers like The Kinks' Do You Remember Walter?, which Meloy performed solo at Variety Playhouse a year or so ago, their two-night stand at The Tabernacle should still be epic. 

Anyhow, their tour took them through Santa Monica, where they performed on Morning Becomes Eclectic at KCRW.

Win Free Ticket To The War On Drugs at The Tabernacle, October 16, 2014!

War On Drugs at Hopscotch Festival, 9/4/2014

I'm pretty sure this post is going to be misunderstood.  I like The War On Drugs, a lot, but due to other commitments, I'm going to give away my ticket to next week's show at The Tabernacle to either the first person to email me or the person who gives me the best reason to give it to them.  My choice.

But already,  I've gotten ahead of myself.  I saw The War on Drugs last month at the Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, and they played a great set, playing well past 2 a.m.  The next night in the same theater, I saw anger bear Sun Kil Moon have his by now well publicized breakdown on the same stage, resulting in anti-Moon graffitti on the sidewalks of Raleigh and later attempts by Mark Kozelek to pass it all off as a joke, including selling t-shirts with his tirade printed on them.

Apparently, some people never learn.  According to the usual sources (Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan), Kozelek was recently playing at some festival somewhere, and got upset that The War On Drugs were playing too loudly on another stage.  He allegedly told the audience that the band sounded to him like generic beer-ad guitar or some such thing, and said The War On Drugs could "suck my cock."

Now he's apparently back to the "it was all just a joke," denial phase, and to show what a swell guy he really is and how he can even laugh at himself, he's released a song called War On Drugs, Suck My Cock.  

The first verse talks about the War On Drugs feud, while the second recounts the Raleigh incident. For some reason, he identifies the city as Chapel Hill, either because it works into the rhythm scheme better than Raleigh, or because he didn't even know where he was or he doesn't know the difference (tell me what the difference is between Oakland and Berkeley again?).  But other than geography, it is a pretty accurate description of what I saw that night, although I wouldn't go so far as to classify the audience as "hillbillies" and the Lincoln Theater didn't actually smell particularly bad.  

What's most interesting to me is the third verse, where he talks about some "spoiled-bitch rich-kid blogger brat" who got offended and posted pictures of the anti-Moon graffiti.  I'm not so vain that I think that this song is about me, but I did post an account of the incident on Blogspot with pictures of the graffiti, although I'm hardly the only one.  But if that's as harsh as the blow back gets, I can deal with it.  In any event, Pitchfork thinks the reference is to a writer at Raleigh's Indy Week, although I don't know how they could know that from just the song.

  

But anyway (and here's where I'm concerned that I'm going to be misunderstood), none of this has anything to do with why I'm giving away my War On Drugs ticket.  The Sun Kil Moon song hasn't changed my opinion about them (although it does have me reconsidering Sun Kil Moon).  

I've already seen The War On Drugs about three times and each show was great, but I've seen them just last month (at Hopscotch) and while I wouldn't mind seeing them again, that same night Courtney Barnett is playing her first show in Atlanta, with San Fermin opening, and I bought tickets to that show, too.  So rather than see TWOD for a fourth time, I'm going to opt to see Barnett instead and give away my ticket, free, to anyone who wants it.

I'm not convinced I even have any readers here, except possibly my friend Lesley down in Griffin who's also going to the Courtney Barnett show, but if anyone does see this and wants the ticket, just contact me at shokai.atl@gmail.com and I'll email the ticket to you.  As stated earlier, the ticket will probably go to the first (only?) responder, but in the unlikely event that I get multiple requests, the ticket will go to the person who most makes me want to give it to them (hint: humor works better on me than guilt).

Good luck, and enjoy!

Dude, I Was There!

Apparently, Noveller keeps a video diary.  Here's her entry from Saturday night's performance in Atlanta, opening for St. Vincent.

St. Vincent at The Tabernacle, Atlanta, March 8, 2014

March Madness, Day 4: St. Vincent's new and probably career-defining tour rolls through Atlanta. An unbelievable, incredible performance, but before talking about that, let's first consider the opening act by Brooklyn's Noveller. 

We've seen Noveller before - a long, long time ago, nearly four years ago to the day, when she opened for Girl In A Coma and Xiu Xiu at the Drunken Unicorn.  We liked her then, and fortunately her sound and approach have not changed.  Noveller is looper Sarah Lipstate, who performs solo guitar compositions using a loop repeater and other pedal effects. The resulting sound is highly cinematic - she and her loop pedal would probably make a great film score, and her set sounded like the score of an imaginary film.

I wasn't sure how a rowdy, Saturday night audience for St. Vincent would react to Noveller's somewhat ambient sound, but they were in fact quite receptive, appropriately quiet during the quiet passages, and cheering in appreciation during the crescendos and musical climaxes.  The crowd cheered as soon as she picked up a bow but before even applying it to the strings of her guitar, reminding me of Dogen's expression that a good horse runs faster just at the sight of the whip.  The audience, very much including myself, enjoyed Noveller's experimental set; in fact, judging by the audience response, you'd have thought that they came out last night specifically for a Noveller concert.

Noveller played a 35 minute set, and it took another 35 minutes before St. Vincent took the stage. But from almost the first note of her amazing set, Annie Clark let the audience know they were in for a real treat, a full-blown musical extravaganza of the finest order.

This is our fourth time seeing St. Vincent, and it's worth recalling the progression of appearances to comprehend the trajectory of her career. Our first exposure to St. Vincent was her performance at a sold-out and crowded Earl during Rocktober 2011.  She commanded a larger venue, Variety Playhouse, for her next appearance in Atlanta on May 19, 2012, and returned to Atlanta during Rocktober 2012, performing with David Byrne as part of the Love This Giant tour at the Cobb Energy Center. She obviously picked up a lot from Byrne during that tour, as, among other things, her performance last night incorporated a lot of choreography and stagecraft similar to the Love This Giant show.  

The late Kosho Uchiyama once said that the secret to living a fulfilling life is to completely throw ourselves into everything that we do, vividly living and experiencing each moment of our life as it occurs, holding nothing back.  Annie Clark seems to be following this advice, as last night she held nothing back, giving everything she had during her entire 90-minute, full-throttle set, more so than at any of the previous performances I've seen.  This was not only the best, most enjoyable concert by St. Vincent I've seen, it was one of the best, most enjoyable concerts I've ever attended, period.  A strong contender, if not a shoe-in, for Concert of the Year.

Where to start?  Visually, the show was amazing.  She didn't need to employ any multi-media effects, no film projections or slideshows, but just using some relatively low-key choreographed moves around the stage (no backup dancers needed) and creative use of standard lighting effects (changing colors and occasional strobes, but no blinding spotlights in the audiences' faces), she created an amazing, unexpected, visual spectacle - unexpected because it was so amazing, and amazing because it was so unexpected.

Glamour has always been a part of the St. Vincent persona, but usually in a low-key, indie-rock way.  In the indie aesthetic, the band on stage is usually indistinguishable from the audience in dress and appearance - it generally looks like the band consists of random members of the audience who just so happened to have wandered onto the stage.  Annie Clark is a striking-looking woman and probably incapable of blending into a crowd, but while she always looked good on stage wearing her leggy outfits, she always acted as if she preferred that you didn't notice and instead confined the glamour mostly to album cover and publicity shots, and usually with a self-deprecatory and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. 

On this tour, she seems to have accepted that the audience's attention is going to be on her anyway, so she's upped the ante with a new, striking, silver-blonde hairstyle and lots of dramatic eye makeup, and vamping more on stage, alternately acting like everything from a torch singer to a riot grrrl to a robotic mannequin and back to her more unaffected, natural persona.  About mid-way through the set, she slinked up and down a three-tier stand, the only prop on stage, sometimes courageously and conspicuously standing alone at the very top like a confident rock star, and other times seductively writhing up and down the levels or, during the sensuous I Prefer Your Love, sitting back like a Vegas lounge act.    

Everything sounded great.  Clark's voice clearly rose above the band, even during some of the difficult, higher-pitch passages, and the overall mix of instruments sounded terrific.  Her band, a drummer and two keyboards, were the same musicians who supported her during her 2012 Variety Playhouse appearance.  

The set opened with Rattlesnake and Digital Witness from her new, eponymous album, followed by Cruel from her previous album, Strange Mercy, and then Birth in Reverse from St. Vincent.  The set relied heavily on the new songs, but she included a lot of the older favorites, too (notably Cheerleader and Year of the Tiger, among others).

You can hear a lot of the David Byrne influence in the new song Digital Witness in particular - the song sounds like it was written specifically for the brass-band arrangements of the Love This Giant tour. But beyond just the sound, the showmanship of that tour and Byrne's characteristically quirky sense of humor seems to have rubbed off on Clark as well, as many of those choreographed moves seemed designed to put a goofy smile on your face. Despite all the glamour and choreogrpahy and stage sets, Clark seemed to be telling us to relax and not take any of this too seriously - just kick back and enjoy the show.

And, man, can she play guitar!  If there were any doubts about Annie Clark being just a singer or another pretty face, she put those doubts to rest by repeatedly shredding her way through some ferocious guitar passages, most notably during the song Surgeon but throughout the set as well.  In fact, she's such a precise guitarist that it might be easy to overlook how well she was playing - without any sloppiness to overcome, there were no errors to correct, no portions that were played better (or worse) than any others.  This isn't a complaint or a criticism, but I wondered at times if others in the audience were appreciating her guitar proficiency outside of the obvious solo passages, as she made it all look so easy. 

She ended her set with Bring Me Your Loves from the new album and Northern Lights from Strange Mercy, followed by a cover of Big Black's punk-rock thrasher Krokodil, her set closer from 2012 as well.

She changed outfits for her encore set, which started with a quiet, solo version of Strange Mercy performed from the top of the on-stage staircase, before joining the rest of her band on the stage floor for Chloe In the Afternoon, among other songs.

What else is there to say? This is obviously St. Vincent's finest hour, a justifiably confident performer playing at the very top of her game.  The performances during this tour right now are what Annie Clark will be remembered for years from now, unless - and here's an almost scary thought - she comes up with something even bigger and better.  A lot of effort obviously went into these performances, and hopefully this tour will launch St. Vincent into the top of the independent musician ranks.  It couldn't happen to a more deserving artist.

Update: Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a good article on St. Vincent for The New Yorker.

RIP The Tabernacle

I wasn't at this show, but have felt the Tabernacle floor bounce and sway many a time.  It was only a matter of time before it buckled and cracked.  

News flash: the floor upstairs at the god-forsaken Masquerade isn't much better.

Update:  Tonight's show for country singer Corey Smith has been cancelled.

Post-Script: According to a February 10 Facebook message, "City officials have inspected the venue and determined there was no structural failure of the floor system. Our subsequent investigation of the building shows areas that require additional attention to insure the ongoing integrity of the building for many years to come. We are working to prepare the venue for our upcoming shows this weekend." However, the Lauryn Hill concert scheduled for Thursday has been moved to Monday, February 17th, not because of the floor but due to the impending ice storm on its way to Atlanta.

New Shows

I finally got the Upcoming Shows gadget over there to the right working again and apparently just in time as there have been a lot of announcements today about new concerts coming up in Atlanta.  The most exciting of these announcements, IMHO, is Portland's folk-rock orchestra Typhoon finally coming to town (March 17), and playing at what is perhaps my favorite venue, Terminal West, one of the few stages in town large enough to accommodate the large band.

Back on October 28, 2001, when we saw her play a sold-out and packed Earl, we knew we'd never see St. Vincent perform in a venue that small again.  Since then, she's moved up to Variety Playhouse (May 2012), and then the Cobb Energy Center (October 2012) with David Byrne.  

Today, it was announced that she'll next be playing Atlanta on March 8 at the large Tabernacle to support her upcoming album.  The first song from the album is below. 

Meanwhile, back at The Earl, Portland's Blouse will be opening on March 20 for Brooklyn's Dum Dum Girls, who recently told Brooklyn Vegan that their favorite artist of 2013 was our old friend Jessica Pratt.

Finally, it's been announced that New York's Vampire Weekend will be playing Atlanta's majestic Fox Theater on May 5. 

Not bad for one day . . . 

Neutral Milk Hotel at The Tabernacle, Atlanta, October 26, 2013

It's both easy and hard to call any given show "Concert of the Year."  Easy in the excitement and rapture you experience as you're leaving the venue.  Hard, as in how can you compare, say, Savages at Vinyl with Yo La Tengo at the Buckhead Theater, or Blind Pilot at Centennial Olympic Park with Foxygen at 529?  However, given all these cautions and risks, Neutral Milk Hotel presented as strong a contender for Concert of the Year last night as one could possibly hope to hear.

Half Japanese opened. 

Photography, even with cell phones, was strictly forbidden at last night's show.  Although the crowd was big enough - the show was sold out - that I could easily have snuck in a few pictures, I decided to abide by the artists' request in the spirit of cooperation.  I found the Instagram picture above of Half Japanese on someone's Facebook page and since I never agreed not to share someone else's pics, there you go.  The Neutral Milk Hotel setlist at the top of the page isn't from last night's show (or even last night's sequence of songs), but the closest thing that I could find on Google.

But I digress.  The semi-legendary band Half Japanese opened with a full, hour-long set.  They are considered a punk rock band, but listening to them now just reminds me of how broad a range of music the term "punk" was applied to back in the late 70s and early 80s (sort of like "alternative" in the 90s or "indie" today).  Their music nowadays would probably be called "garage rock" or "lo-fi" rather than "punk,"  but then, who needs categories, anyway?  

Half Japanese are led by singer and "guitarist" Jad Fair. I put "guitarist" in quotes because Jad does not play guitar in any traditional manner, once stating "the only chord I know is the one that connects the guitar to the amp."  Instead, he banged and strummed on an untuned electric guitar, eventually breaking the neck off the guitar body and still continued to bend the strings and pull sound from the instrument before abandoning it all together.  

Half Japanese have been together for over 30 years now, although I vaguely recall seeing Fair perform solo once back in the late 80s in Albany, New York, of all places, but don't hold me to that - the memory's pretty vague. In any event, last night the band included longtime members, John Sluggett, Gilles Rieder, Mick Hobbs, and Jason Willett.  Highlights included no less than two separate songs about Frankenstein, a cover of Daniel Johnson's King Kong, and Fair's presence and sly sense of play throughout the set.

After a fairly long break between sets, Jeff Magnum took the stage solo, looking almost like the Unabomber with his long beard and hair.  His first words were to request that everybody put their cell phones away ("We want to play for you"), and then he launched into Oh Comely.  The audience was delirious - no one can cover Jeff Magnum like Jeff Magnum - and when the trumpeter came on stage for the horn portion of the song, they exploded in approval.

The band pulled out all the stops for this performance. For King of Carrot Flowers, the second song of the set, they had a three-member horn section, and at other times during the performance they had a s many as eight people on stage with them.  Band member Julien Koster (The Music Tapes) was as eclectic as ever, bowing a carpenter's saw, playing accordion, bass, a small Moog, or whatever the song required. 

It may not be possible at this point in time to define an "indie" sound, but whatever that sound may be, a strong argument can be made that Neutral Milk Hotel was the first to achieve it. One hallmark of what I consider the indie sound is the use of traditional acoustic instruments such as banjo and accordion, instruments usually associated with Amerciana music, but used in a non-traditional way to fill out the band's sound.  Neutral Milk Hotel have long been innovators in this, as well as the way that they use horns. You can still hear their influence today in the music of bands such as Arcade Fire, Beirut, and The Decemberists.

What was remarkable was how faithfully they captured the sound of the revered recorded versions of their songs, especially considering the 15 years that have passed since the release of In An Aeroplane Over the Sea.  Magnum's voice seems not to have aged at all, and not only did they have the rest of the original Aeroplane band members back together (Mangum, Koster, Scott Spillane, and Jeremy Barnes), but they apparently used the same expressive individual instruments as on the recordings (french and english horns, saws, bowed banjo, and so on).

The result was an entertaining, uplifting, and musically adventurous evening (as if we expected anything less).  The band played a full hour and then returned for a three-song encore.  After King of Carrot Flowers I forgot the sequence of songs, but they included Two-Headed Boy, Holland 1945, and Everything Is, as well as unrecorded songs like Ferris Wheel On Fire (appropriate for The Tabernacle, situated as it is next to Atlanta's new ferris wheel); in short, everything one could have hoped for.

I don't think anyone left unsatisfied, and as we walked out, I heard many people wondering if they'd be able to get back in tonight (Saturday was the first of a sold-out, two-night stand).  In you were a fan of NMH, the evening was everything you could have wanted, and I'm sure that if you hadn't have heard them before, you would have left a fan last night.

It was a wonderful, perfect set, lacking nothing.  Concert of the Year.