the oh so quiet show

The Royksopp show was great last night. As good as their last one? …I didn’t think so. Good enough to make me want to see them again at Webster Hall in September? YUP. You know you wanna.

I’ll start off with the good before the not-so-good. And actually, this doesn’t fit under “good” but the doors were at 8 PM and the show didn’t start until 10 PM. Not a big deal (there was no opener, thank god) but IT CAN’T TAKE THAT LONG TO SET UP. It’s not like they have instruments to tune. But I forgot about the burning sensation in my feet when they started playing, so that’s alright. My friends and I started waiting outside at around 7:30 since other people were already waiting. It wasn’t necessary to start waiting that early, but eh…we know how to kill time, and we ended up up front (that would’ve been pretty sad if we hadn’t).

When Torbjørn and Svein (pronounciation = I don’t know) came out, I almost wasn’t sure it was them since their dress code look liked… haute couture? I’ll admit that anything more complicated than t-shirts, shorts, and shirts has the potential to confuse me, but it looked like Torbjørn was wearing a large apron thing that looked like it wasn’t worn correctly, but that was probably the point (compare with 2003 Torbjørn). Svein wore thin poofy-ish pants; yeah, I had to notice them because he was standing in front of me. I DON’T USUALLY NOTICE PEOPLE’S PANTS. Really.

They started off with “Royksopp’s Night Out”, aka lots of drum action stuff going on, aka awesomeness. The songs they played seemed about half and half between the new album and Melody A. M., which means I was really happy to hear Melody A. M. stuff and my likeness towards the new album shot up (I just bought the two-CD version on amazon today). Chris remembers the concert much better than I can, so I’ll just say “uh huh” to whatever he said they played last night. The new songs I liked the most were “Circuit Breaker” and “Alpha Male”; of course, older stuff was what I liked the most. They played “Eple” twice, the second time being their last encore, but that’s one of my favorite songs so I’m not about to complain. I think it was actually the first song I ever heard by them and one of the first Norwegian words I’ve ever learned (and you know I’ll need to say “apple” a lot…or not). The crowd was enthusiastic, although perhaps not dancing as much as Royksopp’s music would inspire (not that I helped out; I’m no dancer and not much is going to change that).

Even though I really liked the concert, I felt like something was missing and wondered why it didn’t seem as good as the first concert. One thing I did differently was wear earplugs, which became a habit this year when I realized I didn’t want to go deaf before graduating college. The volume last night was on the level of “organ jiggling”. But that wasn’t it. There was a bassist last time and this royksopp.net post reminded me how much he added to the show (does he look like a drug dealer?). I lost my review from back then but …that guy was so cool! Yes! Oh well. But it wasn’t just his absence that made things feel different. The keyboards were pretty far back and it didn’t feel as exciting for some reason. However, if I had never seen them before I would’ve thought last night was better than I think it is now. Or was. ….or something. You know what I mean.

Thanks to CJ, JD, and Erika for joining in on the Royksopp-ing! If anyone’s curious, CJ, JD and I ended up eating dinner at Tokyo La Men. If you like Japanese food, try it.

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Jordan Hagaman wrote a review about the show, or at least about his experience and the setlist. I think this guy stood his copy of the album upright on the stage. Unless that was someone else. 😉