St. Vincent @ Castle Clinton

Yesterday was a beautiful day for a concert by the sea and a beautiful day to get out of the office and go wait in line, so I headed down to Battery Park to see St. Vincent perform for free in Castle Clinton. I also got the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Kate of Julius C while waiting in line for seats, so that was cool. AND I managed to snag a really good seat. Hooray!

Annie Clark and her 6-piece band came out in all white, looking very summery. She looked very cute in her dress with over-sized sunglasses on. The show was great. There were no openers, but St. Vincent played a nice long set (just over an hour, with Annie being adorable and talking to the audience in between a few songs). It was a very laid back, calm show, but it was perfect for the day and the weather. There was a nice sea breeze blowing, and I swear at times the wind swelled with the music (which had a pretty effect on the silver strips hanging from the keyboard).

They played mostly songs off of her album from last year but they also played a few new songs, which was cool to hear. Apparently Annie has been listening to a lot of Prince lately, and so one of the songs was inspired by that. It also made me really happy when she said that she partially named her 2007 album, "Marry Me," after a line from her favorite show (which also happens to be mine), Arrested Development. They played favorites like Marry Me, Paris is Burning and they did Your Lips Are Red for the encore (she prefaced it by saying "so I want to leave you tonight with a nice little song... about murder"). She has great stage presence. It's hard to take your eyes off of her. Although her wild hair was in her face a lot, and I wished we could see more of her face sometimes. But I suppose her wild hair is part of her character.

More pictures here.

Paris is Burning [mp3] - "Marry Me" (iTunes)

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Singin' in the Rain

Sorry to be updating rather late... I've had a rather interesting (and kind of long) day. I will explain why tomorrow (but I'll preview it by saying I played freeze tag and twister in a park with hundreds of strangers).

Anyway, so last night was a free concert at the South Street Seaport as part of the "River to River" concert series. Unfortunately I missed the first band (Takka Takka) because I had to work until 7pm, and The Forms only played for like 10 seconds so I felt like I didn't even see them play, but I did get to see The National play their full set, which was the main reason I went anyway, and they were fabulous.

When I first got there though, it started pouring just as The Forms were going on. It didn't pour for very long, but then again they weren't on stage for very long. Maybe 2 or 3 songs I think (half way through the first song I got a text message and when I had finished replying to the person, they were like "ok, this is going to be our last song." I was very confused).

The good thing about the rain is that the crowd thinned out a lot so I was able to get up pretty close to the front. Not that it really mattered... The bad thing about the rain is that everybody puts their umbrellas up, which are impossible to see over, regardless of how close I was. Luckily, it stopped raining just in time for The National.

Since I didn't really get to see the first two bands, I will stick to talking about The National. They are from Brooklyn (woot! represent!). They have this intensity to them. It's really interesting to watch. You can tell they really love what they're doing and they love the music they're playing. They get so into it, it's like they're completely absorbed in their own music. They also switched instruments a lot, which showed that most of them are multi-talented, so I have a great deal of respect for them.

The one wish I had was that whoever was mixing the sound had turned the bass down a bit and turned the violin up a LOT. I couldn't hear it hardly at all except for during the quieter parts of songs, or when the violinist would get very feverish and aggressive about his playing. I really would've liked to hear more violin. And for two songs they had a trumpet and a trombone, which I couldn't really hear either. I was very annoyed at whoever was doing the sound mixing.

All in all though, a fabulous show and a fabulous night (once the rain stopped).

Mr. November [mp3] - The National - "Alligator" (iTunes unavailable)
Fake Empire [mp3] - The National - "Boxer" (iTunes unavailable)

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