oh, right, i meant to tell everyone who reads this that if you weren’t around saturday night, you missed the single best live music performance i’ve seen in my life.

not necessarily the most fun show (um, daft punk at coachella), or most exciting in an energetic small venue awesomeness kind of thing (braid reunion was pretty excellent), and definitely not the most personal or intimate (mountain goats at spaceland, or pomona college); but in terms of highest quality, swimming in beautiful musical giddiness, i’ve never seen and heard anything on the level of the decemberists at the hollywood bowl this weekend.

sweet jesus, if ever there was a pop band whose songs deserve the benefit of a full LA philharmonic backing, this is one of them. the grandness this little band of theatre/literature/folk nerds specializes in was turned up to overwhelming, and i swear i couldn’t stop grinning the entire time — no matter the number of wine bottles we had emptied prior. i mean, they played the motherfucking TAIN, their 18-minute song that was released as it’s own EP for god’s sake. it was a glorious musical spectacle (which i totally called ahead of time to jessica, by the way. i mean, if ever you were to play that song live, wouldn’t this be the time?). my only complaint was that it only went on for 12 songs when i could have easily sat through twice that.

god, i wish more people could have been there to see it with me, but there is a consolation prize. and i do say consolation, because as grateful as i am to have found it, no bootleg recording could do the show justice. what i’m really hoping is that they recorded this show, or record shows on their supposed upcoming tour also backed by orchestras, for a nice crisp-sounding DVD release in the future. until then, to tide us all over, at least there is a very decent digital recording of the whole show, downloadable for free thanks to some true internet saint.

if you don’t care enough to download the whole show, at least enjoy a clip of it with the new pay day song a couple days early: odalisque live at the bowl.