The concerts last night were awesome! Spoon really put on a rocking show. I think my favorite song was The Ghost of You Lingers, which I thought was way better live than on the album.

But, for me, the real highlight was TNP (my, how I hate their name), who opened for Spoon. I finally got to see Neko Case perform live! And yes, she really can sing as awesome as all of her albums indicate! The best part of the entire evening was when they did Challengers, the title track of their latest album. Other salient songs were Go Places, Bleeding Heart Show, Spanish Techno, and frankly, pretty much everything else they played.

Emma Pollock played before TNP, and I must say, she was quite good. Her final song, The Optimist, was really fantastic. She even got some of the members of TNP to provide backing vocals, percussion, and accordion! First concert I’ve been to where all of the acts were really great.

This concert was also the first time I got to try out my new fancy-pants ER-20 concert earplugs. They worked wonderfully. I don’t plan on going to any more rock concerts without them. I usually don’t like using ear plugs for anything other than opening bands because they make everything sound all muffly. But unlike regular earplugs, these guys have a fairly flat frequency response. So it just sounds like the volume got turned down to a reasonable level, leaving the vocals and such crisp and clear. These things pretty cheap, so get yourself a pair and save your hearing.

I’m super excited for the Spree concert on Tuesday!