Triptych.

Architecture in Helsinki, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Monday
The Vic Theatre before a large thunderstorm is a strangely happy place. Weirdly, the most affecting thing about this show was the lighting design, which was gorgeous and highly pigmented. The bands both put on competent sets. Architecture had an early Halloween: various members of the band were dressed as a sports star, an indie-rock loving Trotskyite, a stuffed animal, a member of Panic! At the Disco, and an Abercrombie model. This was weird, but even more bizarre was the flood on Belmont when the concert ended. Completely soaked and cold, the concert was almost totally flooded out of my mind by the rain and thunder, hours upon hours of it. In retrospect, the cutely cartoonish clouds that Clap Your Hands had as their background were facile and poorly used. Very little indie rock can actually stand up to the elements, and I suppose this was no exception.

Mt. Eerie, Calvin Johnson: Thursday
The seasons managed to align perfectly for this show, which took place in the eerie, gothic Hutchinson courtyard. One of the first chilly nights of the year combined beautifully with the gawky coldness of both performers. Leaves stuck in neat piles on the edge of the courtyard, everyone got stoned and many cigarettes were smoked by various Northside hipsters and radio station staff members. Walking around with a billfold in my pocket, I could barely concentrate on the actual music, just its presence in the scene. The moon was caught in the trees, and everything was breathing and I was giddy because it was autumn. I wish I could say more about the performances, but all I know is that they were crisp and eerie, like the night itself. Afterwards we collapsed into a Voxtrot dance party which was really just jumping, and we jumped poorly on the slate, in front of the dry fountain. That was lovely enough.

Elvis Perkins, Okkervil River: Sunday
Felt ill before I went, but was pleasantly impressed (again) by Will Sheff, Jonathan Meiburg, and really, the whole band. The Okkervil River boys are adorable, but meaningfully so. They all sing along to every song, they banter, they charm. It’s more than the fact that I love these songs, and that I ventured all the way up to Schuba’s with other people who love these songs. Sometimes it’s the small, charming quirks (drunken debauchery, iffy wardrobe choices, and a dobra) that that make bands work for me live. Though I’ve never seen a live show that I dislike entirely, it’s really rare to stand there and sing along with a room full of people you don’t know, some of whom wrote and regularly perform the songs. It’s this kind of synthesis, I might even suggest love, that really makes a concert worthwhile for me. To know that we are there all together, for no particular reason, and to know that you are wearing a Hans Bellmer t-shirt and spinning a story without sense, that we all have hope or something to hang our hope on when we manage to catch up with it. The evening started with these words, trembled by Elvis Perkins, “While we are sleeping, the shadows flow, time files, the phone rings, there is a silence and everybody tries to sing—oh, oh.”