19 August 2008

She & Him - July 27, 2008





Last night at the She & Him concert I learned that music sounds a lot better if you're dating the person you're on stage with and if you've been playing 1960's girl group music to get the audience jazzed up - with a little "Gypsy" from Fleetwood Mac mixed in (which I took as them being ironic).

Zooey Deschanel is gorgeous and these pictures don't do her justice - but the truly gorgeous thing was the way she looked at M. Ward throughout the night. During their cover of "You Really Got a Hold on Me", it was just the two of them with separate microphones from across the stage and every time there was a pretty lyric she would turn her entire body to look directly at him and he would grin. It was adorable to put it mildly. Or to put it bluntly, it looked like they were going to rip each other's clothes off every second. It was pretty steamy - very cool! The crowd was going wild with all that love.


M. Ward's voice is awesome but he didn't do any singing until the encore so he was mostly just another part of the band (except for some surprisingly good guitar solos). The crowd was primarily full of hipster girls that would "woo" anytime he put his lips to the microphone and "aww" anytime Zooey did anything remotely cute (which was almost always). They were definitely interactive. She kept saying she was overwhelmed with how many people showed up and how happy it made her. It was nice to see how happy M. Ward and Zooey seem together when separately they come across as slightly depressed.

They sang every song off their album, "Volume One", a Joni Mitchell cover, and Ward's "Magic Trick" as an encore (switching the lyrics to "I" instead of "she" for some reason). Overall, the entire set list was enjoyable and the experience was well worth it. Although I'll never understand why such talented, inspired musicians continuously choose ridiculous opening acts. The Rosebuds, a band based out of North Carolina, played what sounded like the same song for 40 minutes. Please don't ever listen to them.


One more thing: M. Ward and Zooey are definitely pretty to look at but their backing band was so cool! There was a very pregnant girl on the bass, a much older man with white hair on guitar, and an extremely handsome drummer wearing a white button down shirt, black vest, and a tie. He looked like a thinner version of Clive Owen but with a receding hairline. It felt like one big, happy, eccentric family.








1 comment:

Melissa Lynn said...

you're covereage of the show is lovely. zoey and m.ward had the same smiling dance going on at the bowery as well! and i can't believe they had a bad opening band then too: the show i went to had "the living sisters" open - and people were having loud conversations to block out the sound. i felt bad.

love you, music maven.