7.30.2010

I love NYC

I am currently undertaking some travels. It has been a good week here in NYC, and I leave tomorrow for another place that will hopefully be less hot and have more A/C. Though, having lived in Boston for a summer, I can already guess that this will not be the case.

I have eaten more amazing vegan food in short spans of time than I thought possible (and I live in a PETA-approved food city!), seen some amazing shows, and chilled with a lot of friends who I seem to see more and more often now that I've decided to visit New York often.

Last night was The National at Terminal 5, which is a converted warehouse space with several levels. It was basically what I imagined seeing them live would be like--lots of bros, cool lights, sound that is extremely close to recordings (and thusly beautiful). You can read about it soon on my buddy Joe's blog, and in the meantime check out his post on the other time he saw The National this week.

The week culminated in seeing Streetlight Manifesto tonight at the Highline Ballroom. This was a pretty good venue, about the size of the Masquerade's heaven room but with the addition of upstairs seating and food. The show itself was excellent-even the openers (Dan Potthast [who is hilarious and amazing] and The Wonder Years [who were okay but had a big enough audience fandom to cause quite the stir]). Streetlight Manifesto was all business and hardly any chatter except for the few goofy moments when Tomas Kalnoky ran around on stage being totally adorable. He is so going to be like Ted Leo in a decade or so--still super hot and energetic despite his age/veganness. Anyway, the set itself was about an hour and included a lot of old Keasbey Nights stuff and newer slower stuff from Somewhere in the Between. The encore was basically all songs from the acoustic EP, which was awesome, and the night ended with "The Big Sleep." On top of all of that, I learned that I am indeed not yet too old for skanking or circle pits or elbowing big dudes who are in fact 3/4 of my age in the kidneys. Here's to life!

7.16.2010

The Heligoats: Fishsticks

In a fishbowl on the beach, I know the salty water stings but its not hard to see from the bowl the world's out of reach...

7.11.2010

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros @ Variety Playhouse

A+++ for audience participation. These guys know how to do it.

The two openers were comprised of people from the band, which has like 10 people in it. They still managed to sound different (and not better; too jam band-y for my taste).

Edward Sharpe played pretty much every song they have, including a few new ones. They were all remarkably easy to sing along to, which leads me to believe that some sort of intentional design is going on.

What else can I say? They've got a shirtless charismatic leader, a gorgeous warbling beauty, and a bunch of people playing a ton of other instruments. There was a lot of epic dancing and singing and at the end, Alex sat on the ground in the middle of the crowd and everyone crouched down around him while he sang. The girl video taping him from 5 inches away looked like her head was going to explode.

Now, to regain my voice and my composure and get some sleep. Good night, world.