sunny sunday again. happy easter, and happy four-twenty i guess if you like (i could smoke today i suppose but nah i won't). i shant be upholding my two-year easter-at-the-barnes tradition. ester suggests googling all your kisses; i'm doing her one better and inviting them to worthstock (like her, i have an even ten.) i just performed excision surgery on my cd player, which is not designed for such things to happen easily. lots to do, of course, but first this, as promised. then brunch. then we'll see about the rest.

the north star is charming, if (like chang street, which the direx told us to take to the parking lot) a little oddly shaped. partly because the center of the floor is sunken a couple feet, the stage is extremely high (chest height) which i normally don't like. the balcony extends to the edge of the stage, so we could look down on heaps of equipment and percussion toys, which seemed like far too many for cex or postal.

indeed, we were there lucky early enough for the unannounced opener, who reminded me of a kinder gentler enon or a more organic p.s. cabasas, torpedo, claves, two chicksingers, rolands, guy with boston area code t-shirt who told us the name of every song. (we learned that synthpop frontmen are awkward, unassuming, painfully cute.) i liked them enough to buy their "single" (same number of tracks and $1 more than the p.s. "ep") and i'm glad i did.

there was space for that set but then a little crush up to the front, pushing me up close enough to hear ryan singing 'carrot rope' to himself, watch him do some last-minute level editing, and see his nicole miller underpants (that is, even before the whole crowd did when orange-t-shirt girl told him to take it off), and chat with him about albums and touring and crowds while he set up. he did his (short?) set from and among and through the audience, taunting the balcony snobs who must not have been able to see him at all. the set was more abrasive and less wordy-flowy than last time, or the last two albums (though of course even the not-yet-released record is already old - he was doing stuff that won't come out until november, or more likely ever.) more dumbjokey ("stop eating," "i can't fuck it hurts too much") and noisey shouting choruses. i could dig it, but it would have been nice to hear a few more hip-hop tunes (he only did "ghostrider" from td&h) or some freestyling. maybe when he comes to olde club next year.

somebody asked him who he'd played with, he said "everybody." true, and it doesn't make much sense for him to be touring with the ps. but whatever. their set had a totally different energy, of course. they diverged little from the album (even in the set order: 1, 7, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, b-side, 9, 2, 10.) the three band members were like adorable caricatures: ben (soo-indie plaid pocket shirt) wore his geetar around his neck the whole time - except when he went to rock out on drums to end "prison" and "clark," which was pretty great to see - even though he only plays a tiny bit in some songs, so as not to look like a complete idiot (he's one of those singers who's compelled to grab the mic for a second before he sings each line); jimmy (brand new morr-music t-shirt) didn't seem to notice the crowd (even martha, who was literally sitting on stage watching him the whole time) but used all his gadgets to recreate the album bleeps and occasionally add a little more reverb or something (the few times when he messed up a little and the mix came out funny revealed how hard he was working the rest of the time), until the last number where he went all dntel-fuzzed out for a few minutes; jenny (holding up the 80s part of the bargain: bright white pants and jacket suit; b-52s-ish hair bob) did the little dances and hand gestures.

so it was fun to watch. and i was dancing the whole time anyway (though a lot of folks weren't.) they also had projected visuals, which would have worked better on a white screen than the upholstery-pattern on the back wall. rainbows for the boy-girl duet, microwave for the b-side, low-camera parkbenches for the single. best was old-school menagerie animation (sea-horses and unicorns) for "brand new colony," on which they invited the openers back up to shake something. rjyan and two of the certainly kids tripled up on a mic to croon "everything will change" about a hundred times, which was kind of surreal. so they played the whole album and left, and we were confused because they didn't turn the lights on, so we clapped in fits. then the band came back and said we only know one more, and i kept shouting "evan and chan!" but instead they did a cover which i thought was maybe dc4c but turns out was phil collins or mariah carey.

it ended early too - so early that there was a long wait at tom jones, and we went to wawa instead. mmm, rainbow popsicle worth every one of those 69 cents. okay, now you know alllll about it. time for food and sunny.

you may be doing this
you may be doing that
you may be doing this
you may be doing that
whaa! whaa!