Wolf Parade, the Wiltern

My God. This show was spectacular. A feat. Amazing. I could not have asked to have seen a more inspiring and plain amazing band than Wolf Parade.

But I'll start off with Frog Eyes -- the opening band. I was not a Frog Eyes fan before last night. Every one of their songs was heart wrenching and almost too emotional. Every note was dripping with feeling, every screwy, brash drum beat soggy with sincerity. Carey Mercer showed that he is not only one of the most inspired live vocalists around (I'd put him up there with Ian Curtis in terms of pure emotion and how much he gets into every part of every single piece of his), but he also has one hell of a lot of stamina. He was strumming the distortion and noise and feedback out of his guitar from start to finish. Truly a great performer. The thing that was so fascinating about their set was that the vocals didn't match with the heart-warming and sentimental melodies (and nor did the My Bloody Valentine-esque guitar distortion and feedback). Counter-intuitively, it all worked perfectly ... in tandem, though. I've never heard anything like this ... it was undeniably beautiful, but also so undeniable loud and a bit sloppy at times.

Wolf Parade, though, was the huge shocker here. What an amazing show.
I was sucked in from their first note. Often times at concerts, I'll go in and out of interest with a band. One song will be great, but the next a bomb ... or they'll start out crummy and end on a high note. Wolf Parade gave their performance their all for the entire hour or so during which they were on. A few new songs were played (including "Things I Don't Know"), but not a single one of the pieces remained unchanged from its album form. They played around with every aspect of every piece ... took it apart, figured out what elements made up the thing as a whole, improved on each minute detail, and ended up with something truly amazing.
Each of the musicians had his own thing going on ... each one was tremendously unique in his own way, but somehow it all came together in a completely harmonious way. The fact that their independence of style and talent relied so heavily on the co-dependent nature of their music was the greatest things to hear live.
Man were they on. Holy Smokes.
Oh, and remember ... my flickr photoset of concert can be found here.

Wolf Parade - Things I Don't Know