Live through this and you won't look back

I've loved music for pretty much my whole life, but 2005 was the year I really became a Music Fan, the year that I started going to concerts all the time and music became one of my main obsessions. And I've loved many, many albums over the course of my life, some from before that era (that set being dominated by Pearl Jam) and countless in the years since, but there will always be a special place in my heart for albums that I fell in love with in the early days of me being a Music Fan. Albums like Rock and Roll Part Three by Ozma, Chutes Too Narrow by the Shins, Let Go by Nada Surf, and Picaresque by The Decemberists. Although not quite as significant in my life, Set Yourself on Fire by Montreal-based indie pop troupe Stars is definitely another such album, so I was very excited when I saw the album's twentieth anniversary tour would be hitting the Beachland Ballroom on February 13.

 

Erin and I went (shout-out to our friends who tag team babysat when our original babysitting plans fell through, making it possible for us to attend) and it was a great show! It was also a timely show, which I'll get to in a bit.

Making this show extra special for me was that, in my 19+ years of being a Stars fan, I'd only previously seen the band live once, also at the Beachland, and that was way back on March 31, 2008. Yes, someone who was born on the day I first saw Stars live would be able to drive by the second time I saw Stars live. Scary, huh? Fun fact (to me, at least), this was a new record for the longest gap between consecutive instances of me seeing a band live, eclipsing the previous record held by Ozma (July 2007 to December 2019, also a 20th anniversary album show).

A really great thing about being a music lover, and a thing that's really cool because you don't know it when you first become a music lover and then you become more and more aware of it the farther into life you get, is that listening to a certain beloved song or album can transport you to a time in your past when you were listening to the same music. Perhaps when you first heard it, or when you were listening to it a lot, or a particularly memorable instance of you hearing it. And the more music you accumulate in your brain over the years, the more opportunities there are for this to happen.

Set Yourself on Fire takes me back to my first year of grad school. Back to a time when I was working in the same lab where I now work, with the love of my life (sea slugs)*, but when my life was otherwise completely and staggeringly different, and there's no way the me of then could have imagined the events between then and now.

*this is an inside joke, the first of many (well, of several) in this post

Thursday's show started out with a lovely set by Toronto singer-songwriter Lydia Persaud, whose powerful voice filled the room. Her soulful songs seemed to command the attention of most of the audience; it's always nice when you don't encounter too much of a notoriously chatty concert crowd, especially during an opener's set.

Persaud was accompanied by guitarist Christine Bougie, who it turned out is her partner. Erin almost instantly recognized Bougie as having been part of the Weather Station's backing band at shows we saw in Toronto in December 2023. I'm frequently in awe of Erin's memory.

 

Not surprisingly, the musicians, both opener and headliner, commented on the horrifying events currently unfolding in the United States. This wasn't the first time I've seen a Canadian artist say something about how they really like Americans and really like playing here and express their sympathy and worry about what's happening to our country. It seems appropriate, so I'll just quote myself from when I wrote about another Weather Station show in September 2021:

There was another thing that [Tamara] Lindeman said during the show that really struck me, in a sad way. She said that it was good to be back in America. She noted that the news from here is "intense" (no kidding!), but whenever she actually comes here, it's really nice. It's a nice place, she said, "and it always will be."

The way she said "and it always will be"... it was one of those things where you say something and the words you use express certainty, but you don't actually feel certain, you actually are just hoping that it will be true.

These really are scary times. And as I drove home, I was thinking about how, when I was a kid, I was told all this stuff about the USA being the greatest country in the world, and a lot of it was BS, but I do think that back then, it was at least generally the case that this country was admired by people in other countries. Nowadays, people in other countries feel bad for us. And for very good reasons! I've been aware of this before, but Lindeman's words really drove it home for me. And it did make me feel sad.

Good lord, how I wish times now were merely as scary as they were in September 2021.

Persaud and Bougie were collecting donations at the merch table for TransOhio and I joined a lot of other audience members chipping in on our way out of the venue.

Set Yourself on Fire is an album that's catchy and beautiful and at times dark but more than that hopeful. Stars are a very earnest band, so much so that when I was a young Jeff, I think I probably felt a little self-conscious about liking some of their especially earnest-sounding songs. I think I'm past that now. Live, they came across as very endearing. The flower arrangement decorating the drumset definitely fit their vibe.

The album begins in a memorable way, the authoritatively declared spoken words "When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire" seguing into the opening notes of "Your Ex-Lover is Dead." Stars' set started the same way, a recording of those familiar words playing, and then the music kicked in and we were off!

There were several points during the show with great audience sing-alongs, and the outro of the opening song was one, with Torquil Campbell urging the crowd to join in singing the repeating line "Live through this and you won't look back." The song is about a breakup, but the words "live through this" seemed to carry an extra sense of urgency in light of, well... *gestures in the general direction of everything* this.

The way the bouncy synth intro of third song "Ageless Beauty" enters on the heels of the dreamy ending of title and second track "Set Yourself on Fire" is one of those perfect moments in music. "Ageless Beauty" is such an infectious song. I was obsessed with the song for a while when I first got the album, and every time I hear it it's easy to understand that obsession. It was a thrill to see live. Amy Millan's vocals really shone. As co-lead vocalists, Campbell and Millan are each indispensable to the Stars sound, and the way their voices played off each other, sometimes within and sometimes between songs, was great to experience up close.

One thing about this album is that it's inextricably linked to an era of time not just in my own life but also in history. Several songs are directly about or seem at least partly inspired by the Iraq War, and it's unsettling to look back on the years of the George W. Bush administration and think about how it seemed like things couldn't get much worse in our country, and then contrast that with what's happening now.

(To be fair, I guess I should mention that the Bush administration was worse for the people of Iraq.)

The lines "Keep watching the sky/'Cause you might get lucky again" from "He Lied About Death" are an obvious 9/11 reference. Indeed, Bush did greatly benefit from the horrific events of that day. Hearing those lines today, though, I can't help but think about how the sky-high approval ratings he experienced in the aftermath of the attacks (peaking around 90%!) could never under any circumstances happen for any American president in our modern hyper-polarized political climate. And yeah, in retrospect I feel silly for having temporarily approved of the job Bush was doing, but the loss of even the possibility of having real national unity in the wake of immense tragedy (see, for example, the conspiracy theories that rapidly spread after the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene last year) is just so sad.

There were several small lyric alterations in response to current events. The line "We're gonna chase the demons out of town" in "Soft Revolution" became "We're gonna chase the Nazis out of town."

The liner notes of Set Yourself on Fire, now twenty years old, include the words, "by the time you hear this the world might be ending, or beginning... whatever happens, BURN... goodbye fascists everywhere..." Maybe it's worth reflecting on how the epithet "fascist" has so often been hurled at various people, many of whom were really bad in various ways, but who weren't really fascists. And now here we are, with actual fascists in charge. Like, Elon Musk was literally doing Sieg Heils at the inauguration.

This isn't fun material for a review of a mostly very fun concert, but this is the world in which we live!

The last song of the album, "Calendar Girl," is another one I really love, and it ends the album on a beautiful and hopeful note. Interestingly, I remember long, long ago really loving the lines, "But I can't live forever/I can't always be/One day I'll be sand on a beach by the sea." Interestingly, because that was many years before I felt a strong personal connection to songs grappling with mortality (see: most of Typhoon's discography). The live performance of the song was an acoustic audience sing-along with the band bringing out a trombone and French horn to add to the saxophone that had been nicely utilized through most of the concert. The band and audience together singing "I'm alive... I'm alive..." was really a lovely way to end the main set, another of those special moments that can only exist when you get a band in a room with a group of people who love their music.

I've been seeing more and more of these album anniversary shows in recent years. It seems to be a trend, and it's a trend I like! Seeing a band play a career highlight album front to back and then follow it up with a sort of abbreviated greatest hits selection from the rest of their catalog is a great way to spend an evening. After the thirteen songs of Set Yourself on Fire, Stars ended up playing nine additional songs, and while there are certainly other songs of theirs I wish had been included, every one of the songs was great to experience. I was especially glad to hear "Elevator Love Letter" and "Dead Hearts." At times, I marveled at Millan's ability to still hit the high notes in her songs. Campbell gave an amusing reaction when he, on the other hand, wasn't quite able to in "The Ghost of Genova Heights" and then settled for singing that section at a lower pitch.

Millan wasn't present on stage during that song, then reappeared for encore closer "No One is Lost" wearing a rad "Ageless Beauty" jacket - a fun way to close out the show.

 

Erin hadn't really been familiar with the music of Stars previously, but she "did her Stars homework" before the show and ended up really liking it. It was a great show, and it was great that we could enjoy it together. I feel more and more that music is a fundamental and nearly essential part of human life, and times like these make it all the more apparent.

"Everyone here has anxiety" (the boygenius concert trilogy)

After one and a half years with almost no in person live music - one and a half years that somehow felt both like an eternity and like almost no time at all had passed - suddenly it seemed like everyone and their brother had scheduled tours for September and October of 2021. When these tours were originally announced, it looked like the pandemic would be largely behind us by the time the shows happened. The delta variant changed things. The shows went on, with vaccine and sometimes mask requirements, musicians and fans adapting the best we could to this strange new reality. In a time of many difficult questions and no clear good answers, we try to choose the least bad answer and make the most of it.

For me, a magical Weather Station show on September 9 in Detroit kicked off a period more densely packed with exciting concerts than any I can ever remember, a period that has made me realize oh, how I've missed live music so, so much - and not only that, but how I've missed simply being around people so, so much.

Among the numerous shows over the past two months, Megan and I managed to catch all three members of fabulous indie rock supergroup boygenius - Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus - in separate live appearances. If you'd told me prior to COVID that I'd have an opportunity to see separate shows by each of the three in a period of less than a month, I'd have been astounded. These are very strange times indeed.

This post is about all three of the shows.

The first, by Bridgers, was on September 18 at EXPRESS LIVE! (yes, that is really the name of the venue - barf) in Columbus. Megan and I drove down from Cleveland, found unfortunately expensive garage parking (thanks to a simultaneous arena concert also in downtown Columbus that night), made our way over toward the venue, and quickly noticed there were just so many kids. So many kids.

I had not been in such a large crowd of people in a very long time. (An outdoor crowd, it's worth mentioning for COVID concerns - Bridgers scheduled all her shows on the tour at outdoor locations.) And so many of those people were so young. It was an interesting experience. I remembered attending an Arcade Fire show in 2007 at the same venue with Cara and my dad, and my dad looking around for people in his age bracket. This was almost like that for Megan and me.

It made me think about what a weird time this must be to grow up in. Especially now, because of COVID. But then, even before COVID. And I guess it's nice to see that some things stay the same. Young people find music that speaks to them and their concerns in whatever era they live in. With everything going on right now, it's not surprising that so many connect with what Bridgers is doing.

When Megan and I were waiting in a very long line to enter the venue prior to the show, someone drove up the side street along which the line stretched, stupidly in too much of a hurry, and loudly honked their horn right next to us at some people who were walking up the street to get to the end of the line that occupied most of the sidewalk. We and everyone around us flinched, startled, and shot a glance at the passing car. A young woman in front of us in line quickly let forth the best line of the night: "Everyone here has anxiety!" A witty and timely complaint directed at the already gone driver.

Megan and I laughed in agreement. Yes, the audience of a Phoebe Bridgers concert, or a Julien Baker or Lucy Dacus concert for that matter, is definitely enriched for people who "have anxiety." (Although how could anyone not have anxiety in the year 2021? If there are people who don't, although a part of me is envious, another part feels sorry for them because they must be really out of touch with reality.) The music of these amazing young women provides at least something of a balm for that anxiety.

After entering the venue, we took our places on the lawn and settled in amongst a crowd of people mostly at least fifteen years our juniors, and it struck me that for some of those kids, this must be the first big concert they'd ever attended, and some of them must have spent the last year and a half waiting for such an opportunity. What an experience it must have been for someone in that position.

Indie pop band Muna opened with a great, energetic set, but one that was marred by the extreme chattiness of numerous audience members. Megan said that being annoyed by that was a sign of getting old. I pointed out that I found it just as annoying when I was in my twenties as I do today.

The audience was more attentive during Bridgers's headline set, although still not as much as we'd have liked. But it was a great performance. And wow, it was just so good to be experiencing something like that after so much time without it!

It was a very warm day, with temperatures dropping only a little as the sun went down, and on two separate occasions the show was paused because someone in the pit had passed out. At a Phoebe Bridgers show! So there was a lot of excitement for sure.

One weird aspect of COVID is that despite us having been together for two years, this show was the first time that Megan and I got to see live performances of songs that were already meaningful to our relationship prior to the show. This included Bridgers's haunting song "Funeral," which Megan loves to point out was a hilariously dark choice for the first song I ever sent to her when we were texting and just starting to get to know each other. Lyrics excerpt:

I'm singing at a funeral tomorrow
For a kid a year older than me
And I've been talking to his dad, it makes me so sad
When I think too much about it I can't breathe

And I have this dream where I'm screaming underwater
While my friends are all waving from the shore
And I don't need you to tell me what that means
I don't believe in that stuff anymore

Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time
And that's just how I feel
Always have and I always will

After she pointed out how strange and funny it was that this was the first song I ever sent her, I obviously had to admit she was right. The thing is, "Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time" was not, like, a representation of my feelings about life. Okay, sometimes things seem like that, but not most of the time. I just really connect to music that gets at that sort of emotional state, that leans into the sorrow that's an inherent part of life. It's also just a beautiful song, and was a definite highlight of the concert.

An even bigger highlight was a solo performance of boygenius track "Me & My Dog," one that I was not expecting, another song meaningful to Megan and me and just an astonishingly good song. (Indeed, we "cried at [the] show with the teenagers.")

The great music was accompanied by striking visuals, something that was true of all three shows in this trilogy, the Bridgers show on a larger scale than the other two. During most of the songs, a large screen behind the stage displayed beautiful artwork matching the content of the song.

Bridgers's band was great, with the trumpet player in particular earning appreciative chants from the audience on more than one occasion. And watching those musicians on that big stage, I thought, wow, they're all so young. I thought that too at the Baker and Dacus shows. And another thing I thought, they all just seem like such good people. Not that you can know for sure. But I think you can kind of tell when you watch them interact with each other and with the audiences. It's really nice to see. The kids are all right, you know?

It was a great show. But it was just the beginning of a trilogy that would get even better.

At last year's Grammy awards, Phoebe Bridgers was nominated for four awards, including Best Alternative Music Album for Punisher. It's an excellent album, so I'm not criticizing it at all but rather praising the works of her boygenius bandmates when I say that among the most recent albums by all three, Punisher would come in third place in my rankings.

I'm glad that Phoebe Bridgers has achieved such well earned success and that so many people have connected with her music. Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus have also achieved a lot of success, but as of now, at least, don't draw nearly as large crowds, and honestly? That results in a better experience from the perspective of an audience member. Megan and I got to see both Baker and Dacus up close in two of my very favorite venues and with audiences that were totally there for the music and not to chat with their friends!

The Julien Baker show was the second of the trilogy and it took place on September 29 at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh. Again, Megan and I made a late afternoon drive out of Cleveland. A nice thing about living in Cleveland is that when artists schedule tours that don't hit Cleveland, there's a good chance that they'll at least hit one of Pittsburgh, Columbus, or Detroit, all very doable drives.

Our trip to see Julien Baker was marked by a remarkable amount of serendipity. This started when we missed a highway exit and ended up taking back roads through the Conneaut area, which led to us seeing a hand-painted sign next to the road advertising the amazing website ForKin.net, which led to even more amazing discoveries that I won't go into here! We marvel at the fact that we would never have known about any of it if we hadn't missed that exit. The serendipity continued as we were waiting in line to enter the venue and heard the two people behind us, a young man and a young woman, talking about the fact that the woman had offered up what she had thought was an extra ticket to the show, then after having found a buyer in the man with her, had discovered she had actually bought just one ticket to the sold out show, not two. And was therefore planning to leave rather than attend the show herself. The serendipitous part was that Megan had accidentally purchased three tickets to the show, and thus we found someone to use that extra ticket.

This was my fourth time seeing Julien Baker live. She never fails to blow me away. It was the first time I'd seen her headline a show, and she lived up to my expectations.

She is a tiny person. As illustrated in this picture of me and her taken at the 2018 Homecoming festival in Cincinnati:

When you watch her perform live, you wonder, where does that voice come from? And that voice is something truly astounding.

During the show, Baker mentioned the first time she had performed at Mr. Smalls, opening for the band Daughter in 2016. As it happened, that show was also the first time I went to Mr. Smalls, and the first time I saw Baker live. It was an unforgettable experience. I went into that show knowing nothing about her music. I left it a big fan for life.

I remember well watching her, so petite, so young (she was twenty at the time), come out on stage by herself and then just marveling at the power of her performance. She's come a long way since then; her performances now are just as powerful but in a decidedly different way. Whereas I would describe her 2016 performance as stripped down, rawly emotional indie folk, in 2021 she's a bona fide rock star with a full band and light show. Whereas many of Phoebe Bridgers's songs felt like they would better fit a more intimate venue, in Julien Baker's show the crashing, post-rock-ish guitar chords of the live arrangements of songs like "Turn Out the Lights" and  "Ziptie" would have easily filled a much larger room. So I felt very lucky to be able to experience the performance in the beautiful intimate setting of Mr. Smalls, a building that was once a church, fitting because seeing Julien Baker live borders on a religious experience.

A mid-set solo interlude including some songs from debut album Sprained Ankle took me back to that evening in July 2016 in a wonderful way. When Baker's band returned to the stage, I quickly noticed that each member was wearing a shirt I'd appreciated at the merch table on the way in - a shirt emblazoned with a large picture of Baker's face.

It was hilarious, even more so when Baker turned to her band to introduce them to the crowd, and it dawned on her that one of them was wearing that shirt, and then she had to have it pointed out to her that they were all wearing that shirt. It was her birthday, so that was how they'd decided to honor her! And as a result of this, I had to buy the shirt for myself after the show. It's such a delightful shirt, and a delightful memory - how could I not?

2021 release Little Oblivions, almost every song of which was played in the show, is an astoundingly good album. Baker's previous effort, 2017's Turn Out the Lights, is also an astoundingly good album. Sprained Ankle is an amazing debut. She has easily become one of my very favorite artists of the last few years, and one that I will never miss seeing live when the opportunity arises. And in this particular show, there was something really special about watching her perform. There was so much joy in her performance. There were so many beaming smiles. There was so much gratitude at being able to be on that stage after the dreadful last 18 months. Gratitude at the opportunity and gratitude to all her fans who got vaccinated and wore masks and came out to appreciate her music. It was gratitude that was shared by me and by most other members of the audience, I have no doubt.

Another thing I have to mention from this trip - the next morning before heading back to Cleveland we made a stop at Attic Records and it was the most amazing record store I've ever been to with a vast collection including the most random stuff that I could have spent all day browsing! We'll have to return some day to spend more time there.

The final show in the trilogy did not involve an out of town trip. Lucy Dacus made a late addition to her tour with an October 14 Cleveland date after having had to cancel a Toronto appearance. Unfortunate for her fans in Toronto, but very lucky for us here. Of the three shows covered in this post, it was the one that Megan and I had the least expectations for, but it was also the one that easily shot past both of our expectations. Dacus has put out some great music - I'm currently in love with her recent album Home Video - but she also really elevates that music in the live setting. I'd seen her once before, three years ago, but I'd forgotten just how outstanding she is live.

There was more serendipity after our arrival to this show. I was (of course) wearing my recently acquired Julien Baker t-shirt, and after Megan and I entered the ballroom and found a spot near the stage, one of a pair of women near us complimented me on the shirt. I mentioned having seen her in Pittsburgh and it turned out they had also been at that show! They were from Pittsburgh, so whereas we had traveled from Cleveland to Pittsburgh for the Baker show, they'd traveled from Pittsburgh to Cleveland for the Dacus show. They, too, had seen Bridgers recently - in Pittsburgh, the night before her Columbus show. One of them said something like, "these shows are my only source of serotonin right now," and, yeah. Yeah.

Things are so weird and hard and overwhelming right now, for just about everyone, everyone in their own way, for some more than for others, but I think we can all say, this is not the life we ever imagined we'd be living. And in a lot of ways it sucks. A lot. Thank goodness for live music. It's one of the best kinds of medicine there is. And thank goodness for vaccines for making these shows possible.

The Beachland Ballroom is one of my favorite places in the whole world. I've seen so many amazing shows there. Prior to the Lucy Dacus show, I hadn't been there in more than twenty months. That had definitely never happened before, and it was so good to be back. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. We took our place toward the front of the room on the left side and I remembered previous memorable shows I'd experienced from roughly the same spot, like Nada Surf in October 2005 (one of the very best shows of my early concert going days) and Sufjan Stevens in December 2012 (a truly magical holiday extravaganza). In a lot of ways I think this most recent show will go down as being just as memorable for me.

Bartees Strange opened the night with a great set. He originally gained recognition for an album of National covers, a couple of which he included in his live set, and which he introduced by asking the audience, "Does anyone here like the National?"

I laughed and looked over at Megan, who gave an enthusiastic "woo!" I laughed because, you see, Megan is obsessed with the National, and in fact one of the main reasons I originally swiped on her Bumble profile was that it included the fact that she listens to the National a lot. I asked her whether she had ever before been somewhere where someone asked if anyone liked the National, and she, not surprisingly, said no.

Lucy Dacus completed our boygenius concert trilogy in a perfect way. She played most of the songs from her fantastic new album, one I think I'm especially connecting to right now because it leans heavily on memories of high school and I recently attended my twenty year high school reunion, and also sprinkled in a few older songs, new unreleased songs, and covers. Like at the Phoebe Bridgers show, a (smaller) screen at the back of the stage displayed some lovely artwork matching the content of certain songs, like this for "Christine":

Dacus has an incredibly charming stage presence. She's also very adept at going between quieter songs that tug at the emotions of everyone in the room ("Please Stay" might be the most heartbreaking song I've ever heard) and louder songs that get the crowd moving. The last three songs of the main set demonstrated this nicely. From the devastating "Thumbs," with Dacus's voice over understated backing music just captivating the whole room, she then introduced the next song as a cover and launched into Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," which I was just as thrilled to hear as Megan had been for Bartees Strange's National covers. Strange then came out on stage to play guitar on "Night Shift" and that song in particular was one of those sublime experiences that can only happen when a musician is in a room full of their devoted fans.

As the song reached its climax, the whole crowd bellowing out the words to the chorus, perhaps even louder than usual to get past our masks, I got chills. It felt like a release of all the emotions of the last year and a half. It was such a great communal experience. It was easily the best singalong I've experienced since before COVID. It was what live music is all about. I think most people in that room felt similarly.

It's a feeling I'll try to hold on to as we enter another dark winter.

Tender Warriors strive to...

Tenders Warriors

 STRIVE TO

find the courage to be sensitive
 be emotionally vulnerable
connect
create 
grow
be comfortable with & embrace solitude
never compromise their integrity
explore
 be true 
be kind
practice self-acceptance & self-love
give an honest effort
forgive 
be present
be patient 
be transparent

- Tender Warriors Club manifesto (by Lady Lamb aka Aly Spaltro)

I had a very busy concertgoing end of the week as I saw three shows in two nights. Lady Lamb, touring in support of her new Tender Warriors Club EP, was the second of the three. I think all three shows are worth writing about.

First, on Thursday night, I saw local indie rock band Cloud Nothings play to a sold-out Beachland Ballroom. Going to see Cloud Nothings play at the Beachland was something that had a sort of eerie significance for me. The last time I did that, also on a Thursday night, was on August 22, 2013. That was the night before the day that Cara was admitted to the hospital, leading to her being diagnosed with lung cancer. As I wrote in a blog entry on the three year anniversary of that occasion, "I had a really great time at that Cloud Nothings show, which some of my friends also attended. Looking back, that was the last time that my life was anything resembling normal." So that was certainly on my mind.

As usual, I had great fun seeing Cloud Nothings. Something I've realized at their shows is that I really enjoy a good mosh pit. Moshing, however, is something that almost never occurs at shows by any other band I see regularly, so it's something to look forward to when going to see Cloud Nothings. It's funny, because I remember the first time I encountered a real mosh pit at a show, which was the Ozma reunion show at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood in March 2006. It was too rough for me and I quickly retreated to a less wild part of the crowd. Now I'm 33 years old and may even have been the oldest person in the pit on Thursday, but there's just something really exhilarating about bouncing around and off of other bodies in a mass of unpredictably moving human beings, in time to loud rock music! One of my friends remarked on how I had been in the pit for almost the entire show while he had only joined in for the last song (the always amazingly intense extended version of "Wasted Days" that Cloud Nothings usually close their shows with), and I replied, "It makes me feel alive!" I was going for a laugh but there was a lot of truth in my statement.

Friday night brought two shows, both by supremely talented female singer-songwriters. First was Lady Lamb (formerly known as Lady Lamb the Beekeeper) on her "Living Room Tour," a series of intimate, solo acoustic performances. The show was not actually in someone's living room but rather in a back room at the Canopy Collective art gallery, a cool setting nonetheless. This was my third time seeing Lady Lamb and each show has been a very memorable occasion.

The first time, March 29, 2014, I braved a heavy snowstorm to head out to the Beachland Ballroom and see a really spectacular show at which Lady Lamb opened for Typhoon, easily one of the best combinations of two artists at one show that I've ever experienced. In fact, Typhoon's White Lighter and Lady Lamb's Ripely Pine are my top two favorite albums of the year 2013. Also very significant in retrospect was the fact that the first opening artist was the band Wild Ones, a fact that would lead me at another Wild Ones show to having a great conversation about Typhoon and about Cara with Wild Ones' lead singer Danielle Sullivan, who unbeknownst to me at the time was engaged (now married) to Typhoon's lead singer Kyle Morton!

The second time I saw Lady Lamb was at the Grog Shop on July 26, 2015. This was the day after Cara's grandmother Margie passed away, which itself was three months and one day after Cara passed away. Margie was also one of my very favorite people, and in a way her death kind of felt like "Cara's death, part two," so naturally both their losses were heavy on my mind that night as Lady Lamb put on a really amazing performance. Her song "Ten" beautifully concludes with the line, "There's a sweetness in us that lives long past the dust on our eyes once our eyes finally close." And wow, did that hit me in the feels that night.

The show on Friday was a big departure from my previous Lady Lamb concert experiences, because her music normally rocks a lot harder than you'd expect for someone described as a "singer-songwriter." It was great to hear these new takes on some of her songs, and the stripped-down acoustic performances really allowed one to take in her lyrics, which I think are some of the best out there today. She also brings an incredibly expressive voice to the table, one that can quickly go from delicate to full of raw emotion. Aly had two acoustic guitars and a banjo with her, which she switched between and repeatedly tuned in between songs. She said that the change in weather was bad for the instruments and blamed a visit to Florida earlier in the tour. She had a lot of great interaction with the crowd amidst a fantastic selection of songs that included a number of requests.

Before playing the final song of the night (the haunting "We Are Nobody Else" from her new EP), Aly gave a little speech in which she explained how Tender Warriors Club was more than an album to her. She explained how one day she had been talking to a friend on the phone, a friend who was going through a really difficult time and who had spontaneously decided to take a trip to Paris, and she had told her friend that her friend was a "tender warrior." At the time she said it, the phrase didn't have any special significance to Aly, but then it stayed in her head and she started to think about it more and more and it become a sort of life philosophy that is summarized by the "manifesto" (from her website) quoted at the beginning of this post. She said that this had become especially important to her in light of all the scary things going on in the world right now. I was very moved by her words. I thought about all the struggles in my own life, and I thought about Cara and Margie, and when Aly said that she would be at the merch table right after the show and would love to talk to people, I decided I wanted to tell her the story about seeing her the day after Margie died.

After she concluded her speech and before she started playing the last song, I glanced at my phone to check the time, and naturally (because both Margie and Cara, aka Margie's "favorite birthday present", were born on September 22) it was 9:22 pm.

At the conclusion of the show a long line of people formed at the merch table. Fortunately, I had been near the back of the audience and was able to get a spot early in line. When it was my turn to talk to Aly I complimented her on the great performance and then I told her that what she had said about "tender warriors" was very beautiful. I then said that I would like to tell her a little story, and I told her that my wife had died of lung cancer in April 2015, and three months later my wife's grandmother had died, and the day after that was the previous most recent time I had seen Aly perform. And that the line about "There's a sweetness in us that lives long past the dust..." had made me think of my wife and her grandmother.

As is usually true when I tell a musician something like this, she seemed very genuinely appreciative. As I've said before, if an artist (or anyone else) does something that has a real and meaningful impact on your life, and you get an opportunity to tell them, you should take that opportunity! (And now that I think about it, I suppose that's part of being a "tender warrior.")

I went on to tell Aly that music was one of the things that helped me get through hard times in my life. She replied, "Music is one of the only things that helps me."

After I'd finished talking to Aly (as well as buying a record and t-shirt), it was off to the CODA music venue in Tremont for the second show of my Friday evening. There I went to see a local band that has become one of my favorites, Noon. Noon started out as a solo project of Erin Kapferer, who plays the piano and sings. She has since added guitarist Patrick Stefan and cellist Shelby Sangdahl (who is quite a busy performer, contributing to a number of projects including the wonderful Shawn and Shelby and who also played with opening artist Sol Fox on Friday).

I first encountered Noon at the Heights Music Hop in October 2015, a little less than half a year after Cara's death. The music of Noon has also been good to turn to in difficult times. For the combination of being both very sad and very beautiful, it's hard to beat. Noon's first album, 9 Years, was just Erin and her voice and piano. It's a wonderful album. The addition of cello and guitar rounds out Erin's sound really nicely, and most of the songs performed on Friday were from a new album the trio are working on now. I'm looking forward to it a lot. After the show, I went up to Erin to tell her it had been a great show as usual. I guess she's noticed I go to see her a lot because she said I was her "super-fan." (Aww!)

There is a lot of scary news right now. So hooray for great music, and hooray for tender warriors!

Memories

One year ago yesterday (May 18) I graduated with my Ph.D. in Biology from Case Western Reserve University.

Less than six months prior, Cara had undergone major surgery and in fact it had looked like she might not have much time left to live. Instead, the clinical trial she started resulted in a dramatic improvement. One year ago, I'd say she was probably in the best shape of any time post-diagnosis.

That morning, I had to go to the school early to get ready for the ceremonies. I walked to school, as I always did. Cara herself then walked the nearly one mile from our apartment to attend the commencement ceremony. (She normally rode her bike to the school, where she was employed, but on this day she was too dressed up to ride.) During the invocation at commencement, the speaker included a line about how we should appreciate being able to "breathe deep" of our surroundings. He, of course, had no clue how poignant this remark would be to Cara and me. On this day, she was able to breathe very well, after having had so much difficulty breathing not such a long time before.

In between the morning university-wide commencement and the afternoon Graduate Studies diploma ceremony, there was a lunch in the University Hospitals atrium. The food was nothing special, so Cara and I decided to head over to the Hessler Street Fair, one of our favorite annual events. It was a gorgeous day for a walk. At the fair, which is something of a hippie event, we made quite the couple - Cara in her polkadot blue swing dress and me in my fancy Ph.D. robes - and we attracted a lot of attention.

We both got the famous Hessler Street Fair lemonade and we both both pizza from Fire Truck Pizza Co. In fact, we had gone to the fair the previous day and Cara also got pizza that day - it was so good that we had to get it again!

At the diploma ceremony, Cara joined me in walking across the stage as I received my diploma. It was a very exciting moment for both of us, the culmination of a long journey we had taken together, for I was but a first year graduate student when we initially met.

That day is a very good memory.

Someone told me recently that they hoped that with each passing day, things for me were getting just a little easier.

Now don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the sentiment and am not upset with the person who said it, but I find it a little misplaced. Actually, the idea that things would start to get easier within less than a month of someone losing his wife and best friend seems fairly outlandish. The reality is I miss her more as more time passes. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm wallowing in self-pity, because I'm not, but it's a very hard thing to deal with. There will always be a void in my life. I still have a lot of really great things going for me, even without Cara, and I can be grateful for that, but I can also choose to do all I can to keep her memory and spirit alive. And that I will continue to do, and I will continue to share it with the world.

In many ways I've spent the last few days paying tribute, in my own personal way, to Cara.

Friday was National Bike To Work Day. Cara always rode her bike to work, as long as she was healthy enough. Even last year, while she was undergoing treatment for lung cancer, she rode to work many times. Me? I always walked, until we moved farther up in the Heights last summer, so now I drive. But on Friday I did ride my bike to work. It was raining in the morning, but Cara didn't let a little rain stop her from riding to work, so I didn't either. (This is despite the fact that I once fractured my pelvis in a cycling accident that happened on a wet road. This time, I was very careful!) The local ice cream shop Mitchell's (a place Cara and I enjoyed) was offering one dollar cones for cyclists, so I stopped there before going home in the evening. Fortunately, it was no longer raining.

Saturday brought the first day of this year's Hessler Street Fair. I rode my bike there as well, meeting Jessiye, a good friend of ours (especially Cara's) who Cara had actually first met on Bike To Work Day last May. I got the same lemonade and pizza (a delicious white pizza with bacon and honey) that we had enjoyed last year. Before Jessiye showed up, I also took a little walk in the surrounding neighborhood. I walked by the apartment I lived in when Cara and I started dating. I walked to the stadium at Case's North Residential Village, to the spot where we first held hands.

So many memories.

I took yet another bike ride on Sunday. I had seen that Jukebox, a fairly new bar in Ohio City, had a weekly brunch by a different local chef each week, and this week's chef was Saucisson. That's not the name of a person, it's the name of a company - actually, just two women, "lady butchers" as they like to call themselves, whose products Cara and I loved getting at the local farmer's market. I thought this sounded nice, so I set out on my bike toward the other side of town.

I rode most of the way along the Euclid Corridor, thinking of Cara the whole way. From 2008 to 2011, Cara rode to and from work (downtown at Medical Mutual) on that same bike lane. Over time, she came to despise that job - providing customer service for a health insurance company that is always looking for ways to make more money by denying its customers' claims is a demoralizing task - but that daily commute was so great for her. She found such joy and freedom in those twice-daily five mile rides. I can remember her proudly telling me how her speeds were improving as she rode more and more.

As I entered downtown, I imagined what it was like for Cara to do the same. I rode all the way to East 9th, turned left and rode past the front entrance of her old building, where I had occasionally picked her up at the end of the work day. Then I turned onto Carnegie and crossed the bridge to the West Side.

Riding across that bridge to Ohio City was something else Cara did many times. Unfortunately, due largely to a number of injuries I suffered, it was not something I often joined her in doing. So again, as I crossed the river, I imagined Cara, the wind in her face, looking out at the river and at the city she loved.

Jukebox is in the Hingetown neighborhood of Ohio City, which, in the summer, has a Sunday Market that Cara and I also enjoyed attending. We had never been to the bar itself, which is too bad because it's a neat little place. I got the Corned Beef Hash with Saucisson's corned beef, Cleveland Kraut (another local company that Cara and I enjoyed patronizing at the farmer's market), Montana Girl Mustard (another great local product!), potatoes, and an egg. I also got a Cleveland Mule, a drink with local whiskey, ginger beer, and lime, similar to a drink that Cara sometimes liked to make at home. Both were delicious.

Not surprisingly given the establishment's name, there is a jukebox there with a nice eclectic music selection. I played four songs. First, "I've Got Dreams to Remember" by Otis Redding. I don't think I'd ever heard the original version of this song before; however, there is an Okkervil River song called "Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas" that is one of my favorite songs ever, an incredibly nostalgic and emotional tune, and it quotes the chorus of the Redding song. Second was "Home" by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - one of the happiest love songs ever, and a song that Cara and I sung together in the car on the way home from seeing the Magnetic Zeros play a show in Kent. Third was "That Teenage Feeling" by Neko Case, a song that Cara once put on a mix tape (we used to make mix tapes - well technically mix CDs - for each other). Last, I played "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles, which doesn't actually have a connection to Cara for me but is a very emotional song that was one of my favorites around the time I finished high school and started college. How the years go by...

Of course, I thought of Cara the whole time, but I felt happy. I rode home feeling invigorated. Cara loved riding her bike so much, and even though I didn't ride as often as her, I now appreciate even more what a great feeling it can be. Instead of going directly home, I completed Cara's old route home by riding into Little Italy and past the place we first lived together. I then rode up Mayfield and stopped for frozen yogurt at Piccadilly in Coventry, another place we loved.

It was a weekend full of bike rides. It was also a weekend in which I went to two shows at the Beachland Ballroom, both Saturday and Sunday nights. On Saturday I met our good friend Troy to see local indie rock duo Mr. Gnome (a really great band who I had somehow overlooked for many years!) and on Sunday I went by myself to see singer/songwriter William Fitzsimmons. Although Cara did not go to nearly as many shows as I did, I have many great memories of going to the Beachland with her. Foremost would have to be the annual prom that the Beachland used to hold in May, a chance for adults to dress up and pretend they were kids again (without the hefty price tag). One year, Cara and I were voted the Queen and King of the prom! This was remarkable considering we did not actually know anyone else there, but we must have stood out as an amazing couple.

We danced at prom, of course, but some of my other best memories there also involve dancing. The first dance at our wedding was to the song "Northern Lights" by Bowerbirds. On our first wedding anniversary (to the day!) we saw Bowerbirds at the Beachland, and got to dance together to a live performance of "Northern Lights." Another time, we enjoyed dancing to Snowblink's cover of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."

Another fond memory comes in the fall of 2013, little more than a month after Cara was diagnosed. We saw Okkervil River, my favorite band of all and one that was very significant in our relationship. Cara, at the time, would have gotten too tired from standing for the whole show, so we brought a wheelchair and I wheeled her up to sit front and center below the stage. Although she couldn't stand, she sang her heart out along to some of the songs.

The last time we went to a show at the Beachland together was on my birthday last year. It was a stunning performance by Sharon Van Etten that we both very much enjoyed.

Spending so much time doing things that remind me of Cara is kind of a mixed bag in the emotions it brings, but I think, in the long run, it is better to do this. And it is important for me to share it with other people. I don't want anyone who knew her to ever forget what an extraordinary person she was.

Yesterday I was shocked to learn that the mother-in-law of one of my co-workers had just passed away.

From lung cancer.

Only ten days after being diagnosed.

Life is a very amazing and a very fragile thing.

The National at the LC Pavilion, 6/15/13

September 19, 2005.  Less than a week ago, I had gone to my first concert at the Beachland Ballroom, a spectacular performance by Sufjan Stevens and his band.  Before then, I hadn't been much of a concertgoer, but now I was eager for more.  A friend, who went to a lot of concerts and who I had run into at the Sufjan show, asked if I wanted to tag along with her and some other people to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Beachland.  CYHSY were the buzz band of the moment, thanks in large part to a glowing review from Pitchfork for their debut album.  I decided that sure, it sounded fun, and I went.  At that night's show, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were opening for another band, The National (before the concert, I didn't know much, if anything, about either band).

Interesting sidenote about the malleability, and fallibility, of human memory: when searching Google to find the date of the concert, I came across a forum post where someone said, in reference to their "biggest Beachland moment," "I went to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the opener was The National on what would be their big come up year for Alligator, in 2006. I don't know if they would agree, but it seemed to me they blew up after that. That night, I think they were better than CHYSY."  This is actually the second time that I've come across a reference on the Internet to a past concert that I attended where the person misidentifies which band opened for which (in this case, the year is also off by one, but that's not a big deal). It's really fascinating to me how humans have such a powerful ability to remember things, yet at the same time, can so often hold memories about events in their lives that are at least partly contradictory to the objective history of those events. Okay, so that's my neurobiologist side coming through.  Back to the main point.

That night, the ballroom was pretty packed for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.  After they finished, some people began to filter out of the room.  The size of the crowd continued to diminish during The National's headlining set. Given the band's career trajectory, I think it's almost certainly true that some of the people who left early are now fans of The National.  I wonder if any of those people remember what they did, and now regret it?  To be fair, I also didn't appreciate the performance to nearly the same level I would now, but I did at least stay through, and enjoy, the headlining set.

The National have come a long way since then.  Last Saturday I saw them perform at the LC Pavilion in Columbus, and the outdoor venue, with a capacity of about 5000, was pretty close to full.  It was actually something of a last minute decision for me to attend the show.  Cara didn't want to go to Columbus that night because she was planning to do a bike race the next morning, so I'd be making the drive, both ways, by myself.  I decided I didn't want to miss the concert.  It was a good decision.

The event, dubbed the "Next at Wex Fest," featured three bands.  Openers Mount Moriah played a nice set of twangy alt-country. I enjoyed it, but didn't find it particularly memorable. The next band, Local Natives, was another one which I'd seen previously at the Beachland.

They played a really good hour long set with a nice mix of songs from their two albums. The band's sound is highlighted by strong vocal harmonies and at times exotic-sounding percussion. I expect they'll continue to grow in popularity.

The outdoor setting worked well for this concert. At about the time Local Natives were concluding their set, the sky was gorgeous, which the band remarked on.

Darkness began to fall as the excited crowd waited for The National to arrive on stage. That crowd would not go disappointed. From the start of "I Should Live In Salt," it was clear the band would be providing a thrilling experience both aurally and visually.  There were several cameras set up on stage, and live footage of the band was mixed with an interesting selection of other images and projected on a giant screen behind the stage.  The colorful display, with the band members in stark contrast in front of it, made for quite a sight.

But of course, the main draw at a concert should be the music, not the light show.  In that regard, The National delivered and then some.  They played a set heavy on songs from their two most recent albums, also throwing in a few songs each from their highly acclaimed earlier releases Alligator and Boxer.  This is a band whose members have clearly honed their craft to reach a great level of musicianship.  Matt Berninger's signature baritone vocals and the rest of the band's accompanying music sounded just about as great as you could hope for a band to sound.  In addition to the five normal band members, I have to give special credit to the trumpet player and trombone player the band brought along on tour.  The powerfully brassy notes emanating from these two added so much to the band's live sound.  On some of the songs, the brass created something of a reinterpretation of the original (The National do include some horn sounds on a few album tracks; by contrast, the haunting strings which appear on some of their songs were absent at this concert), and often the live version sounded even better than the album version.  On "The Geese of Beverly Road," the trumpet took the opening notes which are played by a clarinet on the album.  This song, from Alligator, was simply stunning, definitely one of the highlights for me - the guitar sound created such great atmosphere, and Berninger's vocals were really powerful.  Actually, if I could change anything about the concert, I'd ask for more songs from Alligator, an album I've recently realized, after many years of listening to it, is in fact one of my all time favorites.  But I guess getting three songs from an eight-year-old album isn't bad.

Another highlight was main set closer "Fake Empire," perhaps The National's most popular song and for good reason. I just love the piano intro and the trumpet part that comes in near the end, and it all sounded so great live.

The encore started with "Humiliation," a track from the band's latest album, Trouble Will Find Me.  The band tacked on an intense outro that's absent from the album version, with Berninger screaming the vocals.  (He screams more often live than on album - another example would be on "Squalor Victoria." It's a treat to witness.)  When the opening notes of Alligator's closing song "Mr. November" started up next, the crowd went wild.  I had a feeling this song would be something special - I remembered the last time I had seen the band, at the Beachland in '07, and how Berninger had climbed up onto one of the giant speakers next to the Beachland stage, so I wondered what he'd do this time around.  What happened easily surpassed any expectations I might have had!

The LC Pavilion's audience section is mostly a sloped lawn; in between the lawn and the stage is a fairly sizable pit section.  I was standing at the very back of the pit (I have to say that going to concerts is the main time that I really appreciate being tall).  I could see, after Berninger began singing "Mr. November," that he climbed down from the stage into the the audience.  Still belting out the vocals, he made his way through the crowd, his long microphone cord trailing behind him and being held up by audience members.  Soon, I realized that he was just feet away from me!  After that, he changed directions, went toward the side of the pit, and climbed into a beer stand, still singing.

Matt Berninger's journey through the crowd during "Mr. November."

I was definitely laughing at this point.  It was a giddy, exhilarated sort of laugh.  "Mr. November" had to be the biggest highlight of the evening, but it wasn't the last song.  The band followed it with "Terrible Love," which ended at 11:00, which is apparently the venue's curfew because Berninger announced that they had to stop, and said something about the people in condos nearby.  This was greeted with a chorus of boos.  Thankfully, Berninger, after consulting with the rest of the band, said they could play one more song, and it didn't count because it was quiet.  The band gathered at the front of the stage and performed "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks," with no plugged-in instruments (acoustic guitars and trumpet and trombone were played, and voices were sung, into the mics).  It was a perfect finale.

 This really ended up being one of the best concerts I've seen in a long time.  It was well worth the trip to Columbus, and it's hard to believe in retrospect that I was uncertain about going.  I realized that live music can really be something special, so if there's a concert you want to see, just go for it!  If you don't, you're throwing away the chance for a wonderful experience and memory.

Even if, over the years, that memory may diverge somewhat from what actually occurred.

Lucius and You Won't at the Beachland Tavern

"It doesn't always work that well," Josh Arnoudse, lead singer of indie folk band You Won't, remarked to me as I was chatting with him at the merch table after his band's show on Thursday night at the Beachland Tavern.

We were speaking of the portion of the band's set in which he and Raky Sastri, the other member of the duo, had stepped off of the stage and performed a pair of songs unplugged, on the tavern floor, in the middle of the audience.  Apparently, sometimes when they did this, a noisy audience ruined the experience.  I thought once more of how lucky I was to have such a great place to see concerts.  I've also seen bands like Megafaun and The Rural Alberta Advantage perform songs out on the Beachland floor, and it's always something magical.  You Won't took it to another level by actually bringing a harmonium out to the floor with them.  The first song saw Arnoudse playing the harmonium and Sastri playing the saw; for the second song, Sastri took over harmonium duties while Arnoudse climbed up onto a chair to sing.  And then, partway through the song, he went down to the floor, opened up a bag, and very dramatically (by which I mean, he almost hit a nearby audience member) pulled out a wind chime, of all things.  I'm sure that if a picture of me had been taken at that moment, it would have captured a wide grin on my face.  It's moments like that that make live music such a wonderful thing to experience.

The unplugged section was the top highlight, but You Won't's whole set was great.  I picked up their album Skeptic Goodbye after the show, and I'd highly recommend it (the whole thing is streamable on Bandcamp).  It's a catchy little folk/blues-rock album that, to me, really stands out from the crowd of modern indie folk.  Maybe it has something to do with being performed by just two guys, two guys who are clearly really passionate about their music.  It's an album with an intimate feel, even as there is at times a lot going on (check out the music credits - "Josh Arnoudse: vocals, guitar, piano, bass, mandolin, accordion, FX pedals, stomping feet and clapping hands! Raky Sastri: drums, harmonium, accordion, singing saw, bowed mandolin and mountain dulcimer, modified coffee can, cardboard boxes, washbasin, cellular phone, stolen road sign, stomping feet and clapping hands!").  Arnoudse's lyrics, his somewhat Dylan-esque vocals and the often fuzzy sound lend a nicely nostalgic air to the music.  Their live sound was heavier than the album's, and suited the concert setting well.

Sastri, in particular, was a joy to watch, playing (and switching between on the fly) a large assortment of percussion and keyboard instruments with great deftness and intensity.  Both members of the band brought enormous energy and talent to the show, and by the end of their performance I, having only listened to the band once before going to the show, was completely won over.

It was a great show - but You Won't were just the opening band!  This was a show that I kind of just went to on a whim because I thought the bands sounded interesting and it would probably be a good time.  And I was very right.

Headliners Lucius are starting to attract some buzz.  This is a band that catches your attention before you hear a single note of the five-piece's music.

I'd guess the band is dressing and styling themselves in this distinctive way to try to help them stand out in a crowded music scene.  I can't fault them for it.  Really, it adds to the fun of seeing them perform.  And did I say You Won't brought a lot of energy to their performance?  Lucius easily exceeded the openers' energy level.  On some songs nearly the whole band was engaged in raucous percussion parts.

Lead singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig both have gorgeous voices, especially when they harmonize together, and the drumming, guitar playing, and backing vocals from the three male members of Lucius rounded out the band's sound nicely.  This was really infectious stuff; the audience was clearly eating up every note.  "Turn It Around," which closed out the main part of Lucius's set, is a truly fantastic pop song.

And when I say "the main part" of the set, that's because Lucius, too, stepped out into the audience to perform a couple of songs unplugged.  It's really something that more bands should do when they have the opportunity, which the Beachland often provides.  It brings such a great sense of connection between audience and performers.  One of the two lead singers of Lucius spoke some clearly heartfelt words about what a journey it had been for them, and how grateful they were that we were all there to see them.  I felt equally grateful to be able to see such great performances in such a great setting.

Lucius and You Won't are both bands that I could envision becoming quite popular.  If you have the opportunity to see either live, don't pass it up!

Sufjan Stevens at the Beachland Ballroom, 12/16/12

I'm fairly convinced that Sufjan Stevens is a genius.  I'm also convinced that he's a pretty weird guy, and that he's aware of this.  Last night, after stumbling over some lyrics early on in his new epic 12-minute holiday masterpiece "Christmas Unicorn," he wryly said, "Who wrote these lyrics, anyway?"  Oh yeah, and let's not forget that he was wearing an elaborate unicorn headdress festooned with balloons and feathers at the time.

There's just something about the guy.  I mean, who does these things?  How many indie folk musicians would bedeck themselves with sparkles and balloons and a unicorn horn during a show?  How many indie folk musicians would release 10 discs of Christmas music, one disc for each year, in two 5 disc sets, each packaged with all sorts of extras ranging from stickers to deep, thoughtful essays on the holiday season to temporary tattoos?  How many indie folk musicians would close an album (The Age of Adz) with a 25 minute pop song ("Impossible Soul")?  How many people, period, could even write a 25 minute pop song and make the whole thing absolutely brilliant?  And how many people could get a room full of mostly twenty-and-thirty-something indie music fans to boisterously sing along to a series of traditional Christmas carols?

I certainly had high expectations for Sufjan's concert at the Beachland, where I'd seen him twice previously.  Both were great shows, and I was excited to see him perform his holiday music, which I love.  That's something I never would have thought I'd say as recently as a few years ago.  I can't say that I ever had any particular fondness for Christmas music before I started listening to Sufjan's Songs For Christmas collection.  I fell in love with the first five disc release, both for the beautiful renditions of traditional carols and (especially) for some of the best original songs of Sufjan's career.  This year he came out with the second five disc set.  It's easily even more ambitious than the first, and I'm beginning to feel that it's just as great.  So Cara and I headed over to the venue a half hour before doors opened, hoping we'd be able to get a decent spot near the stage (last time we'd been near the back), and fortunately, the line was not yet too long when we got there.

I knew beforehand that the show was going to be quite a spectacle, but when I walked into the ballroom, my eyes instantly widened at what I saw.  The stage was all decked out in holiday cheer, and that was nice enough, but to the left of the stage...

There was a giant, colorful, game-show-style wheel stretching from floor to ceiling with the names of different Christmas carols festively decorating it.  One might have guessed that this wheel would be spun during the show to select the songs that would be used for the sing-a-long portion of the night, and one would have been right.  This was all tremendous fun.  There were even hymn booklets handed out at the entrance to ensure that everyone could sing along.  Here's the cover (make note of the instructions printed on it):

Perhaps ten or twelve carols were performed sing-along style, with Sufjan, his band and the audience all celebrating the holidays together.  This was divided into two segments of the main set, the rest of which was a stunning display of musicianship easily up to the standards of any "normal" Sufjan Stevens performance.  I'm truly amazed at the diversity of his catalog, from his early acoustically focused songs to his more electronic and experimental recent stuff.  His Christmas music covers the same range.  Sufjan's music can at times be catchy, rousing, or majestic, but at its best, I'd usually describe it as "heartachingly beautiful."  A prime example would be "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti," a fan favorite from the Michigan album featuring Sufjan's amazing voice and banjo playing which was inserted as a brief, non-Christmas interlude in the middle of the main set.  Several of his holiday songs are just as chills-inducing.  My favorite is probably "Sister Winter," which was an absolute thrill to see performed live.  I also loved "Justice Delivers Its Death," a new song in which Sufjan seems to ponder the strange contradiction of a holiday meant to celebrate Christ's birth that is celebrated with rampant consumption and consumerism.

There were several short hymns which Sufjan and his band performed a cappella, filling the ballroom with angelic harmonies.  And at other points in the show, there were bubble and confetti machines, and inflatable Santas and unicorns and enormous bouncing balls thrown into the crowd.

And then there was Sufjan, dressed as the Christmas Unicorn, climbing up onto a speaker directly above where Cara and I were standing, during an astonishingly good song that goes from gentle, playful verses to an increasingly majestic chorus before transitioning into an irresistibly danceable cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart."  It was truly a magical moment, and one that only Sufjan could pull off.  "Christmas Unicorn" closed out the main set perfectly.  After several minutes of unrelenting applause from an enraptured audience, Sufjan returned to the stage sans holiday attire for a perfect encore that filled me with nostalgia for more than one reason.

You see, the first concert I ever attended at the Beachland was Sufjan Stevens on September 13, 2005.  (I know the exact date because we have a poster from the show hanging in our apartment.  I didn't actually buy the poster at the show, but found it at a local shop years later.)  Not only was it my first concert at the Beachland, it was at that point in my life that going to concerts became a "thing" that I did.  In a sense, it was the beginning of a new era in my life.  At that show seven years ago, Sufjan was touring his breakthrough Illinois album, and last night's encore was quite Illinois-heavy, including "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," another one of those heartachingly beautiful songs on which Sufjan's voice and lyrics do things that no one else's can.  As I stood there, I couldn't help but think of being in the same room, hearing the same music more than seven years ago, and of all the ways my life had changed since then.  In a way, it was like things had come full circle.

After playing "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" Sufjan said he thought they had time for one more song.  I was silently hoping for one song in particular, and when he laid down the opening notes of "Chicago" on piano I was overjoyed.  "Chicago," after all, was the song Cara and I used for the recessional of our wedding, and now we were standing together, perhaps ten feet away from Sufjan Stevens himself, seeing the song performed live.  (Amazingly, earlier this year we also got to see a live performance of our wedding's first dance song, Bowerbirds' "Northern Lights.")  Talk about a perfect way to end the night!

During the show, some of the stage banter included joking about how the world was supposedly going to end in a few days.  And I thought to myself, if the world were going to end, this was a good concert to go out on!

I'm the Christmas Unicorn.  You're the Christmas Unicorn too.