Epic Road Trip of Awesome: Portland

It isn't really fair to call this a Portland post - we had a lazy Saturday morning of browsing around downtown Seattle, so by the time we made it back to Portland it was late afternoon, leaving us only a short window for pre-show snacking before it was time to hit the queue like over-excited 15 year olds for Bright Eyes at the Crystal Ballroom. If you're only going to fit in one meal in Portland though, it may as well be a Deluxe Grilled Cheese at Dot's Cafe, one of Portland's many dark and dingey late-night bar/diner/cafe establishments (it is apparently too cool to have a website, so you're just have to imagine us eating our lunch in a booth in the dark):

 

It's the herbed cream cheese that does it

Filled with delicious cheese, it was time to head to the show. Lucky we got there a couple of hours early, as the line was almost around the block when we joined it. 

 

I won't crap on too much about Bright Eyes - you all know that they are my favouritest favouritest band, and I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that I've never been happier to queue up for two hours in the cold to get a good spot as I was on Saturday night. Portland was kind to us and even held off on the rain while we waited.

 

 The Crystal Ballroom was originally opened as a Cotillion Hall in 1914, and still has many glorious fixtures of the era (including floors that shake terrifyingly when the room is full of excited kids - according to Wikipedia this is because of its sprung flooring, which is designed to give more bounce for ballroom dancing. Who'd've thunk?). The chandelier, decorative cornices and murals on the walls were a great distraction while we waited through the total yawnfest of a support band.

And then to the main event - 

 

Needless to say, they were completely amazing. The new album really lends itself to a huge, full-band sound, and with the usual suspects as well as a second drummer and second keyboardist in tow, the sound was massive. My ears may not ever recover! 

 

 

Best of all though, the two and a half hour long set included about half, maybe more, of the new album and a ton of old stuff, including a few songs off Fevers and Mirrors that I never thought would see the light of day, and a couple of great b-sides. I nearly weed my pants when they played The Trees Get Wheeled Away, and Poison Oak, which is one of my all-time favourites, almost reduced the whole theatre to grateful tears.

We had a great spot so we took a lot of photos. I may put them all up in a set on flickr, but for now here are a couple more for your delectation (Maddy, I suspect you'll be the only one interested in more pics!):

One way to stave off post-amazing band depression is to make sure you have tickets to the show the following night, and that's exactly what we did. We headed straight to bed because the next morning we had to be up early for the long, long drive to Arcata, CA for the next leg of the trip and... more Bright Eyes!