Oh Conor, that was such a surprise show, many people showed up, but many people did not know. ‘How did you learn about the show?’ Asked me a guy next to me, ‘Twitter, and you?’ ‘Facebook’, he answered. Funny, how the social networks are now what inform us about such things at the last minute, explaining this constant obsession to stay connected!
The Echo is such a small venue, with a maximum capacity of 400, and at the end of the evening it was packed as expected, although people did not come as earlier as I would have thought.
But the people who were there early, later in awe front row with me, were waiting patiently, so patiently despite the lateness of the show; I was home at 1 am for a show which was supposed to start at 8:30. And I bet many people were thinking that the Felice Brothers were opening, but you were the opener? That was another surprise.
Oh Conor, you looked a little pissed off when you came on stage, I don’t know, there was no smile to see, and your eyes did not look really clear, may be a little too bright because of the wine you were drinking?
But song after song, you looked more at ease, and you actually began talking, and the most you talked was before the last song, too bad it was the last one. First, you said something about the heat, saying you had read a tremendous 115ºF on the thing of your car while driving downtown on Monday. But it was small talk, and you realized it right away.
Eleven songs is not much but you came back later for more, two times during the Felice Brothers set, actually you did not seem to want to leave the stage at all, you were on the side, really into their music and could not resist jumping on stage one more time to sing on one of their songs, presenting the mic under the face of a girl next to me who did not know the lyrics but did her best, looking at your eyes and blushing in the dark. Is it me or she had a sort of Winona thing?
Laura L. (L. on the set list was for Laurent) was such a great start, announcing the bright mood of the evening, and no, not a newbie as Iman wrote yesterday but an olbie rather, from that 2002 album with an interminable title ‘Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground’. The slow start, in suspension, as if held by the Felice Brothers’ accordion, then the build up with the guitars, like a sad and nostalgic country-ish lullaby, a little tipsy like Conor’s eyes, turned sour at the last minute.
I have the impression Conor has quite a few traveling songs, and “Moab” is one of them, with the line ‘There’s nothing that the road cannot heal’ sung with fervor; aren’t we always looking for something of this sort?
There are two kinds of Bright Eyes songs, the ones which concentrate on the music and the wordy ones, although they all have a tendency to be wordy. ‘No One Would Riot For Less’ is definitively part of these last ones, but the slow melody when Conor said ‘So love me now/Hell is coming/Ha man could you do it now /Hell is here’ was a killer moment, chilling a second the warm Echo atmosphere, then followed by an explosion of nervous electric violin and guitars which reanimated the song to new hope.
I must say the Felice Brothers were a fantastic band to back up a song like ‘Four Winds’ off the Cassadaga album with this mix of adventurous fiddle, keyboard and guitar which gave so much ardor to the song, and Conor, you became so angry at the end, like a folk mad man spitting his heart out, tapping his right foot on the floor.
There were many disheveled times like this one, thanks to the Felice ‘s exciting stage play when the excitation was high, and quieter times with ‘Ten Women’, but with the following songs ‘We Are Nowhere And It Is Now’ and ‘Train Underwater’, from the ‘’I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’ album, people were pleased beyond their expectations. It’s too bad that some of them started singing, no offense, but these songs belong to Conor! The keyboard delicately introduced ‘If you hate the taste of wine/Why do you drink it until you’re blind?’ and the accordion was just perfect after a line like ‘I haven’t been gone very long/But it feels like a lifetime’. I still don’t know where is that yellow bird but poesy works better with a little mystery.
‘Train underwater’ was such a treat, which made Conor and the Felice explode, exulting on stage, climbing on drums, releasing all the possible energy. It’s about NYC, ‘I always get lost when I leave the village’, that kind of song that, with a simple solo guitar, reveals something deep and true in you, whatever it is, something that will set you free.
I don’t have much memory of ‘Spring Cleaning’, except that Conor started alone and was joined by everyone in the middle of the song, and Conor was holding his guitar in a bizarre way at times, almost vertically during ‘I Know You’, a new song that Iman is apparently dying to hear live. The chorus ‘oh I know you want to/I just don’t believe that you can’ made me think at some older song, but I am not sure which one, could it be ‘I got you Babe’?
‘Poison Oak’ was received like a candy that all smiling people were ready to eat. I had noticed some girls lurking on the set lists taped on the stage floor, before the show had even started, expressing their excitement while reading ‘Poison oak’ on the list. Definitively a favorite of the fans, with that yellow bird again.
Conor actually talked and joked before his last song, ‘Method Acting’: ‘I want to dedicate this song to actors,… there are quite a few actors in this town,… I’m trying to break in myself, I got a few scripts’. The six men went crazy on that one with furious guitars and devilish accordion and violin, forming circles and climbing drums, riding the sound till the end, Conor’s mic even fell down from excitation. From the wild dancing, jumping and moving around of everyone, tons of sweat drops were sprinkling the crowd.
I expected him to come back and he did, almost at the end of the Felice Brothers’ set with an atmospheric and slow moving ‘Easy/Lucky/Free’ and even a solemn trumpet solo from a new guy who had joined the band on
stage.
stage.
As soon as he was done, it was setlist chase, as everyone wanted a piece of the rest of the treasure, and ‘Winona’, next to me, got one she got to nurse all evening long afterward.
What is left after a show, are the memories of the songs sung a certain way, some riffs, some intonations, some specific details. I guess the best way to describe the feeling left after the bright eyes songs I love the most, are these little treasures of liberation as the ones that seem the most devastating, the ones that sink you in the deepest despair are the ones which suddenly makes this despair become the trampoline of your victory, the song explodes high in the sky and set you free.
‘No One Would Riot For Less’