Perşembe 8 Eyl 2011, 2:06

Wed 7 Sep – Bon Iver, Kathleen Edwards

This was, by far, one of the best shows I have EVER been to. The opener, Kathleen Edwards, was great-I normally listen to the music of opening acts before the show, because usually I have never heard of them before hearing about the show (as was the case this time), but I didn't really get a chance to for this show. Either way, she was really great-you could tell she was having a lot of fun and really playing her heart out, and I felt like that made it a lot more fun for the audience. One of the dudes I was sitting by/had met earlier that evening also shouted out that Wapusk National Park was that day's Jeopardy clue of the day, after she just got done singing a song about Wapusk, and she told him to come out to the merch table after her set and offered him a free signed copy of one of her albums. She also had two accompanying musicians who were great as well (Jim Bryson and Roy(?) Tough), although they didn't really seem to want to interact with her and the crowd as much, but they were both very excellent at everything they played, which included guitar, an E-bow and keys (Jim), and backing vocals (both of them).

There was a short intermission, in which I found out that all the bathrooms and concession lines were overcrowded like no fucking other. Then, Bon Iver came out to a huge wave of applause and shouts. They opened with an epic as hell version of Perth, and played several other tracks from their new album, like Calgary, Holocene, Towers, and Wash.. He also played Brackett, WI, also a great song, and was his contribution to the Dark Was the Night compilation that came out a couple years ago. They also covered Bjork's Who Is It, which was fucking unreal and rocked the fucking house (partially due to completely ridiculous beat-boxing from the black dude who was also playing horns, cymbals and singing back-up), and I don't know if anyone else was, but I was totally dancing in my seat. They closed the set with a great rendition of The Wolves (Act I & II) which climaxed perfectly, especially with such a big band. Justin, before the song, had told everyone to sing the last lyrics (proper ones, so to speak)-"what might have been lost"-with the rest of the band, and then to scream when those lyrics stop, "because if you don't," he told the audience, "you're gonna have a really shitty rest of the week." This song was quite possibly what might become one of my favorite musical moments ever (live in concert, or on album-possibly even a religious experience), and then to top it all off, after the incredibly noisy and amazing climax, they exited the blacked out stage and re-entered after about 5 or 10 minutes. They then launched into a badass version of Flume (I believe, I don't exactly remember for sure if they played this one during the encore or not) and then closed out the show with Skinny Love, which probably the majority of a sold-out 1500 person theater were shouting along to, and which he was playing solo guitar while everyone else in the band was singing back-up vocals to in groups of 3 and clapping. This was a truly great experience, and if you've never seen either of them live, but especially Bon Iver, I recommend that you do it as soon as possible, no matter what it takes-you won't regret it, it will heal your soul and leave you wanting more.