And the Storm Held Off: Air, Sondre Lerche, and Sea Wolf @ the Greek Theater September 21, 2007

This night already had two strikes against it. For one, a horrible thunder and lightning/ flash flood inducing storm was on its way to Los Angeles County. The other was that I found out my friend payed way too much for her tickets to see Air at the Greek Theater- like highway robbery too much. So the night had the symbolic black cloud over it as well as the giant ones hanging in the sky. Or so I thought.

For whatever reason the 'storm' held itself at bay for most of the night. There was a bit of spitting that our garbage bag coats kept us from (we came prepared). And it was pretty light and then just stopped altogether for the majority of Air's set. It stayed that way until we reached our cars. Due to the insane amount of cash my friend felt it necessary to fork over, it did ensure that we were close to the stage and that exiting the Greek would be relatively painless. So once it was over we were able to jet out to the car, and then sit and wait for 15 minutes till we could leave the stacked parking. The timing was just too perfect- as soon as we got inside the car the drops began to fall and then it just started to pour. Awesome.

Right, so yeah, there were 3 acts Friday night (I just needed to get the lucky weather related story out of the way). First up was the local band Sea Wolf- who are all over Indie radio right now and rightfully should be. Their new album is super and live they are also, well, super. They played some tracks off the new album and received a positive response from the sparse crowd. Most of the movement came from Alex Church (also was in Irving) who ferociously strummed his guitar, while the other bandmates grooved along in the back. The only crap part was that the set was so short, less than 30 minutes I believed. But I guess I should be used to big places like the Greek skimping on time for the opening acts.

Second up was Sondre Lerche- who I learned two things about tonight. 1. He is Norwegian (which had I ever bothered to look up any info on him I could have found out myself) 2. How to pronounce his last name correctly. He's a sprightly little fellow. Bopping around stage, just himself and his two guitars, he awkwardly told stories and thanked the crowd for pretty much not walking out when he took the stage. His set was also pretty short, stopping around the 30 minute mark. He played some songs off his newest release Phantom Punch including "Say It All", "She's Fantastic", and "Phantom Punch" as well as some older ones-"Modern Nature", and a couple tracks from a movie that he is writing the soundtrack to (Dan in Real Life). One of the things that strikes me about him is how much of a crooner he sounds like. I guess I never really payed attention to it before, but was very apparent sounding when it was just him tonight. And, he pulls it off.

At some point the Greek got pretty packed. They make a big deal about having the trees lit up with different lights, so it actually looked real pretty once I craned my neck to look around. Air took to the stage and I felt like I was back in 1995. Cause they were still wearing the same clothes and singing the same songs. Seriously, if you want a general idea of what a Frenchman looks like, here: tight white pants, white wind breaker with the collar turned up and the sleeves pushed to about a 3/4 length, and a baby blue polo shirt underneath. There; French.

But anyways, the crowd was a mix between indie kids and club kids and just plain drunk obnoxious people who won't tell you to your face that you're blocking their view, but will just yell to no one in particular about it. You know who you are, jerk. Um. So, Air started off with a live band and about a million electronic things all over the stage with lots of smoke pouring out and pretty dancing lights going off in several directions. They had some new songs I didn't recognize, and they played a slew off their earlier releases. This was also the first show in awhile I've been to that had a real encore. Thankfully it was only 3 songs long and did not go on for another hour. I was a bit on the tired side this night, which may have contributed to the half-amused approach I took to the whole show. Also the rain. Ugh.

At some point I want to go back to this venue when it is not raining and maybe some kind of Orchestra is playing instead- there is a slight chance there will be less drunk people screaming how they can't see the French Horn player.