03.12.2007 Bloc Party/Final Fantasy/Smoosh @ The Orpheum

at this point in time i do believe the orpheum is vancouver's #1 venue. such a nice place to see a show. has a way better atmosphere than the commodore, and it's run better too. shows actually start when they should and they even tell you over the PA when bands are about to begin. I'll also give their ushers/security credit, while normally annoying, today they actually did their job and kept the number of people who rushed the front to a minimum and kept the aisles cleared.

smoosh are 2 teenage sisters from seattle, singing dreary pop songs, i guess. the first impression of them was "that's cute..." but after that wears off, you sort of notice that the drummer is pretty good. i guess thos drum lessons from death cab's drummer has paid off. the keyboard/sining sister complements the drumming well. the little crowd that did see them seemed to enjoy it. i wonder how man dudes felt weird taking pictures for their blog.

owen pallet aka final fantasy was as charming as ever. steph the projectionist was with him as well. same slides as last september, but still quite enjoyable. he also performed a new song 'louis takes off his shirt' or something like that, which he claims to be hard to play. he's just so good at what he does. (loops violin and keyboards while singing and playing over them)

so i missed out on bloc party last time they were here. the first time at richards, i couldn't decide whether or not i wanted to go before it sold out. the next time at the commodore, it sold out and i couldn't justify $40 for a scalped ticket. both of those had average openers. this time around the openers are better and the venue is a bonus, so i thought hell why not. they opened with (predictably) song for clay which got the crowd shuffling in their seating area. then another new one and then a whole lot of bangers from 'silent alarm.' i checked my watch around the time they played banquet. at this point it was 30 min or so in. uh oh... here's where i got worried. i love 'silent alarm', but as for the new one, i think it's pretty 'meh' aside from 3 or so songs. well since the first half of the show was primarily old stuff, the later half was filled with new songs and for me, quite boring. the encore had 3-4 songs and during the last song, kele invited a bunch of people on stage. in true vancouver fashion, if you invite one person on stage, you invite them all. overall a fun show, but the pacing really sucked.

$40/46 (should have been $30/46, but final fantasy was worth an extra 10)