Islands – Granada – 6/25/08

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Islands was awesome.  It’s the show that, let’s say the French Kicks woke up from their nap, got excited, and reworked all of their music to be high energy.  With two violinists.  Honestly, it was the best show that I have seen in a long while (maybe New Pornographers/Spoon of last November – maybe even longer than that).  They came on the stage and absolutely ripped every song they played and the crowd loved every second of it.  The show was once again at the Granada in Dallas, and when we arrived, AWOL was onstage:

AWOL was very interesting; I can’t say his rapping was all that great but the weird thing is that between honestly every song he did, he would a-capella sing some stuff, and it was *awful.*  By no means does he believe he is some singing talent, but he would just break into some Champagne Supernova or something for a few bars and try to get the crowd to sing along.  In particular, he was having a really good time with this one group of hipsters/hippies/dirtheads/guy in a banana costume that were right by the stage who were going apeshit for AWOL.  At any rate, AWOL and his crew were highly entertaining, if not all that great.  After a few impromptu karaoke sessions by AWOL, he gave way to Islands:

Right from the beginning they were not messing around; just the hits.  I don’t know what they opened with, but the second song they played was a totally awesome The Arm.  This band was fired up and the crowd was loving every second of it, and for good reason.  The vocals were spot on perfect the entire show, the guitars sounded great, the bass and drums were awesome and the violins were great as well (they even used chains for a sound effect during Life In Jail).  If I had a complaint it’s that I could have used more lead vocals; I feel like they were under-mixed, but that’s a tiny gripe.  At any rate, These guys know exactly how to take their album to a completely awesome new level live, which is exactly what they did the whole show.  They seemingly played nearly their entire record, Arm’s Way, with awesome versions of Pieces of You, J’amie Vous Voire Quitter, Creeper, Kids Don’t Know Shit, Life in Jail, In the Rushes, We Swim, To a Bond, and I Feel Evil Creeping In.

During the brief hiatus from the main set, the kids in the pit started changing “ROUGH GEM! ROUGH GEM!” and when Islands came out they told us that they were going to play a Billy Joel cover, but launched right into Rough Gem, to the massive delight of the crowd.  Guy in the banana costume even started crowd surfing.  Those dirtheads loved Islands and for good reason, it effing ruled.  Go see them if at all possible!

Islands – The Arm - Arm’s Way
Islands – Creeper - Arm’s Way

Limited upcoming tourdates, but see them if you can:

6/25 – Houston, TX – Walter’s
6/26 – Baton Rouge, LA – Chelsea’s
6/27 – ATL – Masquerade
6/28 – Charlotte, NC – Neighbourhood Theatre