two concerts in a week’s time, and both were definitely worth the money if you get the chance to catch them in the future.

the first was the decemberists at the wiltern last saturday, who proved once again to be able to play their beautiful and grand songs equally well live. i’m still smitten with colin’s voice and lyrics, and the sound was great, so much that during some of the string sections of ‘the crane wife 1 & 2’ or ‘the island…’, they were so clear and sharp they sounded almost too good to be live. a spectacular show with people switching instruments between songs and a great set list. shaun made a great point after the show, and i’m paraphrasing: ‘it’s like this one band ignored the last 100 years of music to do celtic ballads and sea chanteys, but the guy’s got a perfect voice for it so it comes out amazing’.

last night was cursive at the avalon, which i had slightly more mixed feelings about, mostly because of the set list. it seemed like the first half was comprised mostly of songs i’d specifically skip over if listening to the albums on my ipod, the less powerful, or in the case of some of the songs off happy hollow, the songs that are annoyingly over-powerful and tough to sit through. once they worked through those though and played some of my favorites off the new album and ugly organ, they blew me away as usual with cellos, three horn players, crazy-loud guitars and tim’s borderline psychotic bellowing. ooo, when they played ‘dorothy at forty’ and ‘gentleman caller’ it was right back to being all good with me in an instant.