(Pic of an older Bright Eyes show via Pitchfork.)
We send you to concerts... and now we live vicariously through you. Since we couldn't make it to the Bright Eyes show on Saturday night at the Hollywood Bowl, we asked Franklin Avenue reader Judy Coleman -- who won our contest (thanks to all who emailed, it was one of our biggest pool of entrants yet for tix) -- to fill us in.
She gladly obliged... and did such a bang-up job that we may make all of you do it for now on! (Hey, nothing's completely free!) Here's her report:
Though Conor Oberst is something of a poster boy for waify indie boys nationwide, he was able to take full command of the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night with the out-sized intensity of his music. In the post-show words of a guy walking near me, "From the first song, I was like..... whoa."
That first song, "Don't Know When But A Day's Gonna Come," pretty much stopped motion in the Bowl, except for the twinkling of cell phone LCD displays as people focused their camera phone shots. Oberst was dressed in jeans and a black shirt that matched his chin-length black locks and set off his ghostly white face, which was projected in close-up for most of the set. There would be no room for a lazy performance.
And from start to finish, he and his band (together, Bright Eyes) delivered. The clear highlights were the alienation anthem "Lover I Don't Have to Love" and the heart-rending ballad "Make A Plan to Love Me." Occasionally the audience sang along, but most of the time they were entirely rapt. Between songs, men and women alike would swoon, audibly.
Before the show began, audience members around me had been wondering aloud why and how Bright Eyes would be accompanied by the LA Phil. The orchestra's presence, short of the backup vocals and occasional cymbal wash, was largely superfluous, and the band clearly felt liberated when it returned, alone, for the encore, which included a duet with M Ward as well as a new political rocker called "Cockroaches." If Bright Eyes hadn't already reduced your heart to pulp with the main set, this song was sure to finish the job. An obvious future crowd favorite, "Cockroaches" was perhaps the strongest anti-Administration song I've heard yet, though admittedly it's a weak field. (You can see the lyrics, roughly transcribed, here.)
In retrospect, the openers for the evening seemed a bit light -- M Ward meandered in and out of tune and key throughout his otherwise likable set of folk-rock, while Yo La Tengo switched perhaps too easily between indie moodiness, wanky soloing and disco partying. Neither was terribly impressive and both appeared to assume knowledge of songs rather than considering how they might go over with first-time listeners who need to be able to discern melody and structure, if not lyrics. By comparison, Conor Oberst kept the musicianship tight and the rich and often
complicated lyrics comprehensible -- the mark of a true professional, and successful musical evangelist.
Stay tuned this week for another big concert ticket giveaway!
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