Photos: Friendly Fires, The xx, Holly Miranda @ Casbah
This show sold out WAY in advance, and I’m not sure why I was surprised. The xx has recently become everyone’s new favorite band (with good reason, I might add – have you listened to “VCR”?), and Friendly Fires never puts on a bum show.
The only unknown to me was Holly Miranda, and she was quite a surprise. Her and her amazing voice really rounded out the bill.
Also, this guy’s shirt was awesome:
Anticipation was pretty high for The xx’s set. They’d recently downgraded to a three-piece, but fortunately for all of us, it hardly showed. They played the songs fairly straight from their album, but sometimes, when an album is that good, that’s all you need. I don’t usually make that exception, but in this case, it was valid.
I half expected most of the crowd to jet after The xx, but the majority stuck around for Friendly Fires, and I’m sure no one regretted that decision. The two previous times I had seen them, they put on a frenetic live show from first note to last, and this time was no different. Their set may not have been long, but they put their all into it, and left me feeling absolutely wiped out, but positively wired afterwards. So wiped out, in fact, that I sadly missed The Big Pink the next night, because I just couldn’t take a third consecutive night of ass-kicking music.
