The Joy of Live Music – Broken Bells

We’re still tired from doing it, but last night Holly and I went to the Broken Bells concert in Seattle, as part of their After the Disco Tour. I did a post about the Broken Bells and After the Disco earlier this year when it came out – really just a great band and a great album.

I’ll also be doing a post on them this week over on Sourcerer, along with my other posts on music – they’ve moved over there for the most part. However, the concert is about all I can think about, and I wanted to share just a bit with you.

Buying albums, watching music videos, all of these things are great – they give you a view into the artist’s thoughts, their emotions, their world. But it’s not everything, and there’s a lot of space for your interpretation or misinterpretation or critique or whatever.

But when you go to a live show, surrounded by other fans as excited as you are (I’m assuming someone else in that crowd was as excited as I was… the people dancing in the aisles during some of the songs might actually have me beat!), and see the artists make the music – see them change up some of their songs, rearrange them, give them new adjacencies – you get to experience the music in a whole different way.

And when the artists add a visual component, as many do, you get even more from them – maybe get to really pick up some of their intent, some of what they wanted you to think, wanted you to feel, with the music.

Or maybe it’s just that I felt this way with Broken Bells last night. As the show opened, and the band came out to stand at their clean white space-aged rounded keyboard stands that looked like they belonged on the bridge of the Enterprise, well, that was awesome.

As the visuals got going, though, first we saw a reflection. It was the audience, in the dark, with lights moving around and just getting going, getting excited. Then it zoomed out from there. We were in space, looking down on the Earth. A night shot: the cities lit up like veins.

As the first song plays out, we pull out from Earth, and away, past other planets, and eventually, at warp speed, we propelled away. It brought whole new meaning and understanding of some of the themes I now see over and over in their songs: as they talk about both Light and Stars, I think they are using the terms often interchangeably, and to give a thought to the cosmos.

They speak often of dreams, as well, and the purpose of life. I say, combine these two themes. Dream big. Reach for the stars. With hard work, you can get there. But be cautious, as it might not be all you thought it would be. At least, the last I get from their song The Ghost Inside, which I highlighted at the end of this post.

But alright, that’s enough of me waxing poetic about the concert for now. I actually have found that on their VEVO, they recently added videos from a performance on David Letterman. Don’t think you’ll make it to their live shows, but interested in seeing them perform? Here’s the playlist of this mini concert:

It’s a lot of what we got to see, though with only 12 songs when we got to see 18 (there was a three song encore!). Not as good as the real thing, but an impressive amount of the real thing!

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