I'm going to try and write short reviews of each concert I go to from now on, there will be another one posted in a few days of Why? with Astronautalis. That one is a backlog from last week.
The first band on for the night was Icona Pop, an electro-pop duo. They opened with Manners, a song they did with Chiddy Bang, and a great song at that. However, this version was entirely their music for the song turned into a dubstep song. By dubstep I mean what is commonly referred to as "brostep", long drawn out sequences with big drops and a pulsating bass. The crowd loved it, but I was not feeling it at all. The rest of their set was solid though, really upbeat and fun electro-pop driven by synths and their energy on stage. I just can't get into dubstep unless it's something like Burial or I guess Aphex Twin to an extent.
Matt & Kim were on second, and they put on a great show. They have so much energy and a great stage presence live, and were really feeling the crowd and playing off the energy. There is a great on stage chemistry between the duo, which involves lots of joking with each other, jumping on the drums, and the occasional walking on the crowd. They did a couple things I loved, such as a very nice improvised piano intro to Daylight, and also doing a cover of this song. However, they also played Harlem Shake at one point, which made me want to kill everybody in the vicinity. All in all though, they put on a great set.
The headlining band for the night was Passion Pit, touring in support of their highly praised album Gossamer. They had these sweet orbs that would move up and down and change colors in sync with each song, and the light show that accompanied them was one of the coolest things I've seen in a concert. They had a solid set, the crowd was really into their more popular songs, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. They did not seem as energetic as the first time I saw them though, and did seem to be going through the motions at times. Michael Angelakos voice also wasn't able to hit the highs as well as I remember from when I saw them last spring. But overall I was happy with their performance, though left wanting a little more. Mirrored Sea and Let Your Love Grow Tall were my favorite moments during the concert. The only thing that nearly killed my enjoyment during all three bands was the crowd, there were so many high-school age people there, or even college people there not singing along to any of the songs, just being obnoxious and wearing neon clothing and party shirts/hats. They seemed to be there just expecting to rave or do whatever, and that was very annoying. I do prefer smaller concerts to larger ones though, so there's that bias. The music was fine though and worth the money of the ticket.
That's it for this installment, hopefully any of you reading this enjoyed it. If you have feedback or questions let me know, and if you'd like me to do more of these I'll try to oblige. I'm thinking about starting a pretty basic blog with music and concert reviews.