Attack of the Smartly Dressed Hipsters

I love, love, love to hear feedback from readers of my website, and one of my favorite readers thus far is Shelby, a girl who has so much musical knowledge she should most definitely have her very own blog ( "Veronica Mars rocks my mismatched socks off. The dialogue is clever, the mysterys are puzzling and the music rocks."). I slowly savor each and every one of her iTunes recommendations-she's better any MTV VJ.

Ms. Shelby recently emailed me, telling me about the Death Cab for Cutie/Franz Ferdinand concert she went to. The best part? She was awesome enough to write an article about it, so you can relish her musical taste, too!

Attack of the Smartly Dressed Hipsters:
Death Cab For Cutie and Franz Ferdinand @ Sacramento Convention Center 3/22

The Cribs were the opener, consisting of three working class English accents stomping and sweating around the stage, provoking no more reaction from the haughty hipsters than an occasional surly foot tap. The powered through their set dressed in tight pants and tighter shirts, and drowned any sorrows they might have had with the lack of enthusiasm by sucking down the beers conveniently placed on their amps. When they did get some people dancing during "Hey Scenesters", it was pretty funny because the one song that got the hipsters shaking their painstaking styled hair was in fact, making fun of them. The general consensus is that, if the opener sucks, well, go get your stylishly distressed concert tee. The Cribs didn’t exactly suck, but they did provide the best opportunity to buy everything from a life on the road documentary of Death Cab to Franz Ferdinand underwear. Highlights from the Cribs: "Hey Scenesters" "Another Number" and the lead singer pronouncing Sacramento as "Sacre-men he-o"

The time between the opener and the headliner was the best time for people watching. I had fun watching the expected tight trousered, sexually ambiguous scenesters clustered in tight groups of their own kind, excitedly bouncing on the soles of their perfectly broken in Converse. There was also a surprising amount of thirty and forty somethings, one who drunkenly told me in the bathroom that if I was an eighth grader, I wasn’t allowed to wear my green cityscape Death Cab tee for a week. But I digress. I had great fun checking out the clever tees (My favorite was most definitely "Cheer Up Emo Boy") The most entertaining group of people to watch was a group of teenage boys wearing the hipster uniform but lacking the necessary gloomy sense of pretension-they were tripping the light fantastic with some movies that looked left over from Footloose, oblivious to anyone else who didn’t share their fancy footed skills.

Death Cab for Cutie descended the stage and kicked things off with a hyper (Well, hyper for them)"Crooked Teeth", then segwaying into an exhilarating "New Year", and greeting the crowd with a cheerfully modest "Hi, we’re called Death Cab for Cutie and we’re from Seattle. We’re so f*cking glad to be here in Sacramento. This is about our sixth time here. It’s better now." They then announced that they were going to play something from You Can Play These Songs With Chords, a move that was greeted with widespread applause. Throughout their set, they dipped into Transatlantcism, playing such favorites as "Title and Registration", "The Sound of Settling" and "Transatlantcism". Most of Plans was played, most notably, a tender "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." The great thing about Death Cab was that the seemed really jazzed to be there. There was no snobbish indie-band-turned-big attitude; they threw themselves into their performance in the low-key rock out that they do so well. Chris Walla seemed especially happy, flitting from guitar to keyboard wearing an ear-to-ear grin and trading quiet jokes with Nick Harmer. Before leaving, Ben Gibbard shared how great it was to be touring with The Cribs and Franz Ferdinand and even dedicated songs to them. Aw.

Franz Ferdinand arrived on stage in a flurry of smoke, blinding lights and their album cover flashing behind them. What I gleaned from their performance is that Alex Kapronos would be a fantastic circus ringmaster if he ever gave up the indie rock circuit. He did hilarious super fast auctioneer style introductions to everyone in his band, and spouted clever lead ins for some of the songs. ("And now I have an important question…DO YOU WANT TO?!?!") Dressed in a leather jacket and straight-legged pinstriped trousers, he resembled Sid Vicious with less anger and more style, and as he artfully skipped and strutted around the stage he sent many a girls heart a pitter- patter. Franz F. got everyone dancing and pogo-ing with a sweaty mix of their most danceable tracks from their two albums. The highlights for me were Kapronos gleefully proclaiming "Nothing matters now!" during "Michael", an explosive "Take Me Out" and three people drumming at the same time during "This Boy."

The concert was a perfect combination of two extremely different bands. It was like getting two great concerts in one, and it was interesting to see the different reactions that they got: Death Cab fans intensely nodded along to Ben Gibbard’s sa-woon worthy lyrical feats, while Franz Ferdinand got the normally unflappable cool kids sweaty with dance punk joy.



Aww, where can I get a tee that says "Cheer Up Emo Boy?" I love that! And let me give an enormous thanks to Shelby-I can't thank you enough!

-tf