How To Disappear Completely

For once I want to be the car crash/not always just the traffic jam

Tuesday night my concert buddy Abbie and I crashed downtown Denver for a concert. What was on the docket? Snow Patrol. Scotch/Irish indie rock, if not at its finest (still partial to Franz Ferdinand), at least full of gentle wit and soul (maybe a bit too much soul bordering on emo, but that's personal opinion).

This band merited not one but two openers. I found the first band, The Duke Spirit from England, to be the more intriguing one. Augustana, while more polished and more well-known to the audience, was frankly not as interesting. Why? I think it was the lead singer that gave The Duke Spirit its awkward charm: Leila Moss had a raw voice that in the fast and heavy sections could give even Grace Slick a run for her money. I liked it. The band made me wonder about female leads in male bands. This article asks some of the same questions. Moss also carried a tambourine that she occasionally played. Made me think of the tendency to regard singing as "not real work." I mean, how many singers do we see just singing? A guitar, a tambourine, a harmonica--all these alternative instruments to legitimize the singers' status as musicians.

For some reason, which I failed to trace conclusively but suspect was due either to the band's enunciation abilities or to the sound set-up, the opening bands came out "heavy on the beat, and light on the words." I like words, but had to do without them for half of the concert.

Snow Patrol's performance was bigger in every way: more lights, better sound, more stage antics. Gary Lightbody, dressed in a snow white Oxford and jeans, set the mood with a little Music and Movement on the kick drum. The concert followed the common pattern: start with something familiar to your audience, move through the lesser known material, and end with the most popular thing you've got. So after he hopped down from the kick drum, Lightbody sang us "Chocolate" (the lyrics of which provide the name for the album Final Straw). Then we got "Spitting Games," "Hands Open," "Headlights on Dark Roads," (whose opening lyrics provide the title for this entry), "Grazed Knees," and "Chasing Cars." Since most of the night's material came from the 2003 album Final Straw and the group's latest work Eyes Open (2006), "Shut Your Eyes," "How to Be Dead," "Make This Go On Forever," and "Ways and Means" followed. Lightbody was no Colin Meloy or Howe Gelb when it came to interlude banter, but he did dub an audience member "an origami wizard" after this person threw a carefully folded song request onto the stage. However light the audience interaction may have been, the UK accent made it all just seem brilliant. The kicker "Run" came second-to-last and solicited audience participation on the chorus:

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear.

The band closed with "You're All I Have." The snowflake silhouettes from the light show swirled on the ceiling in myriads of colors. I was tired from standing, but it was a good night.