More photos: Friendly Fires, The Soft Pack @ Double Door

My fourth day in Chicago, we didn’t really do much during the day. I ventured out to Wicker Park to grab lunch with Tyler from Pitchfork, mainly just to put a face to the name that I’ve been emailing for the past year and a half. We squared away some details about Coachella, and then I headed back to Bridgeport to hang around with Kelly for a few hours. We were both pretty sore from all the walking we had done the day before, so it was a pretty chill day.

When I realized a few days earlier that The Soft Pack were playing in Chicago while I was there, I got in touch with Matty, who put us on the list and told us to be there fairly early. So we wandered back to Wicker Park around 7:30PM, grabbed dinner with a college acquaintance of mine at Jimmy Johns (again) and then made our way to the venue around 8:30.

The show was sold out, and a decent number of people were in the crowd by the time The Soft Pack took the stage at 9PM. They rocked it as always, and their time on the road speaks for itself – I think this was the tightest set I’ve heard them play. It was nice to see some local boys in a non-local setting, and I’m beyond happy about all the good press they’ve been getting lately. And it sure was nice to finally get to take photos of them at a venue with great lighting.

After their set, which warmed up the crowd nicely, Friendly Fires took the stage. I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d heard the band’s name, along with good things about their live show, but I honestly didn’t have a clue what they sounded like.

The answer: electro-rock danceypants music. I mean, really. It takes a lot to get me dancing, and even more to get Kelly to join in, and we were both shaking our asses that night. It helped that every member of the band was highly energetic, and the singer in particular was bouncing around the stage and pouring every ounce of energy in his soul into that performance.

Wow. Even thinking back to it now, I get happily exhausted. I can’t wait to see them again at Coachella this weekend – I’m sure they’ll be a great pick-me-up when I’m footsore and my shouldars are aching.

Although afterwards, I felt completely wiped out – like I had just run a marathon. I couldn’t put together a coherent sentence. We couldn’t even handle sticking around for White Lies’ set, so we headed out into the blissful-for-5-minutes cold air.