The Spree concert in pictures.

On Wednesday at 3:00 p.m., Bubbles, Fargo, Karen, Phil, Slope, Smee, Spork, and I headed out to Dallas for what would prove to be an amazing evening. Things started off a little rough when we had to jump-start Slope’s car, and then there was some confusion about how to contact everyone on the trip, but we got it all figured out.

We got to Dallas with a little extra time to kill, so we stopped by the Mac Store to ogle all the shiny Apple products. One of those black Macbooks would sure be nice, but I think I’d miss Linux too much to actually get one.

After that, we stopped at Burger King for a quick bite and then went to the Granada where we met up with Bubbles. The line wasn’t nearly as long as last year, so we were able to get the spot that we wanted. We put ourselves in exactly the same place as last year, in the third section back where it was close enough to see everything just fine, but not super-crowded.

The first band that opened was Philip E. Karnats, former Tripping Daisy member and friend of Tim DeLaughter (lead singer of The Spree). He really wasn’t that great and had a horrible stage presence. He spent most of one song with his back to the audience fiddling with his amp. They had two drummers on two trap sets, which was a neat idea, but they didn’t do anything particularly inspiring with it. Oh well, we remembered to bring ear plugs this time.

The second opening band was Pilotdrift. They opened for The Spree last year and showed promise but were horribly mixed. I purchased their first album, Water Sphere, about a month ago so I could be more familiar with their music for the concert. The album was really pretty good, and I was looking forward to seeing them live again. They didn’t disappoint. The playing was great, and they were actually well-mixed this time around (other than one nasty burst of feedback).

Then, at about 10:30 p.m., SPREE! The band emerged from a thoroughly fogged stage and started off with one of their new songs. This year most of them were wearing an army-style uniform to go with the theme of their new album, The Fragile Army. I’m still not sure what I think about their new look. It was definitely more edgy than the robes, and their songs were a touch darker as well. There were also some political undertones (a video of George W. Bush with smoke and fire coming out of his eyes, nose, and mouth projected on screens beside the stage accompanied one song). It was reassuring to see that Tim still wore a robe from last year’s tour with an army jacket over it instead of wearing a full army uniform. Don’t get me wrong–I liked the new songs, they were just a little different. I’ll have to wait until I get the album before I pass final judgement.

Any uneasiness about the new songs quickly vanished when they started playing some of their old favorites. When The Fool Becomes A King was particularly amazing. It’s a 10-minute epic from their second album, and they made it even longer during the concert. They paused at several key transition points in the song to do things like have the keyboardist do an amazing solo piece or for Tim to get up and lead the crowd in a short song about how much he loves being back in Dallas.

I’m pretty sure the Dallas crowd gets a better show than anywhere else. Tim was loving the audience just as much as we were loving The Spree. There were many times when he got the audience very involved in the songs, and this crowd seemed to know almost all of the lyrics.

But, as if all of that wasn’t awesome enough, the real highlight was the way they closed the show. They started the grand finale with Soldier Girl (complete with obligatory flute awesomeness), so the energy level of the crowd was way up. Then, Tim said that they were going to do something a little different and that it was good that our singing voices were all warmed up. They covered Lithium by Nirvana! I still don’t understand why that song works so well for them, but they were able to maintain the original energetic angsty feel of the song but added a huge dose of Spree-style happiness. Lithium is already a pretty rocking song, but seeing and hearing it performed by a 20-some member orchestral/choral/happiness band was truly amazing. The crowd absolutely erupted for the chorus (which is comprised entirely of yelling the word “Yeah!”). It was crazy, jumping, fist-pumping, hand-waving, yelling excitement!

And of course, what better way to end the (about 2 hour long!) concert than with Light and Day. Karen even managed to grab one of the drumsticks the crazy drummer guy threw out into the audience at the end of the show.

To put the final cap of awesomeness on the evening, when we were heading toward our cars we got to hear a guy that was playing for a club down the street do a rendition of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.

Good times.

The Spree concert in pictures.