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March 7th, The El Rey Theater, Los Angeles

Ah, the El Rey…or, for those of you who don’t habla Espaniol, the The Rey. They’ve got a quaint 80’s Santa Fe truckstop diner annexed to the venue where you can procure a bottle of water and a urine-sample-cup’s worth of french fries for the low, low price of $9. It’s pretty sweet. Also, the place smells real nice. I think that’s what attracts most folks to the venue.

Whispertown2000 was the first of the three acts. They’re the kind of band you talk shit about through their entire set, then proceed to the merch table to buy their CD. At least that’s what a friend of mine did and I applaud him for it, though after their set I simply talked more-subdued shit. (I may be a bad person. I’m looking into it.)

I was really looking forward to Vetiver, who played second. To Find Me Gone, their new one, is a very easy-going, pleasant record (like your hip older neighbor, Carl, who you have a great time joking around with when you run into each other outside the building, but whenever he calls you you’re unfortunately “busy.”) I had a hunch that seeing them live, what with all that intangible “live energy” I’ve heard so much about, I would finally be able to deem them a great band. Alas, there was no energy. Instead, there was the End of Time and all that had survived were the bearded skeletons of the Grateful Dead in a methadone clinic. The highlight came when I went out for a smoke halfway through and saw another bearded skeleton walk up to the box office and say, “Uh…Devendra…I’m on Vetiver’s list.”

Bright Eyes went on around 11 and it was fantastic. The great thing about Conor and his revolving cast of musicians is that you basically get a new band each tour. A 12-piece slop-rock orchestra for the Lifted  tour, a four-way Oberst/M. Ward/Jim James/Mike Mogis collaboration on the immaculately named Monsters of Folk tour, an ELO/Nine Inch Nails hybrid band for the Digital Ash tour. This time he had a six-piece group of multi-instrumentalists, cranking out some slightly more traditional and focused country-rock.

They mainly played new material from the just-released Four Winds EP and the upcoming album Cassadaga. The band sounded very much at home with these new songs and, fittingly, even the older songs, such as “Make War” (from Lifted) and “Black Comedy” (from the split EP with Neva Dinova), seemed to have been slightly reworked to fit their mold.

Of course the downside was that any fans coming expecting to hear the old hits, numbering only 5 among the set’s total of 15, may have felt a bit let down. But I suppose that’s still a good trade off for getting to see probably one of the last small venue Bright Eyes shows we’ll get in a while.

Yours,
Torquil Crossingham