Van City

My first gig at the famous Commodore Ballroom in downtown Vancouver is going to be very difficult to top. This venue was built about 80 years ago (so I was told) and the dancefloor is built upon old tyres, which i will get to later.

After being served a couple of local beers (table service is awesome), the lights dimmed and the support band rolled out. The support act were called Freelance Whales and reside in NYC. They had a cool Arcade Fire thing going on with five band members including a chick. Some note worthy aspects of the performance were the guitarist playing the electric axe with a bow from a violin and an old box accordion which looked somewhat space-agey (is that weird?). These young guys put in quite an effort and their final song which is called 'Generation^2nd floor' garnered the biggest response and was quite a catchy little number.

After a small interval The Shout Out Louds made their way to stage, and boy did they look Scandinavian.... everyone was tall and bearded and mostly blonde, bar the lead singer.

They busted out new single '1999' first off which along with almost all the other tracks on the new album 'Work' has a mental keyboard riff in it.

There was something very professional about the delivery by The Shout Out Louds... i guess after releasing their third album they have the live performance skill down. Next up was 'Fall Hard' which is another new track and had the chick in the band called Bebban providing some nice backing vocals (which she did awesomely throughout the set).


As the Shout Out Louds proceeded through tracks like 'Fall Hard' , 'Play Game', 'Normandie', 'Throwing Stones' and 'Moon' everyone was definitely in a jumping mood. As mentioned earlier the dancefloor of the Commodore has a very 'spring-y' feel to it, which helped immensely with the next two tracks. Next up was 'The Comeback' which is not only my favourite Shout Out Louds song but it seemed almost the entire crowd's. This is the lead track from their first album and was an absolute blinder! i dont think ive jumped so much since Florence and the Machine!!


The next track 'Very Loud' was another crowd favourite, made famous by being featured on the Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist soundtrack. The real highlight of the night was during 'Tonight I have to leave it' where it seemed that the lead singer was sick of singing by himself so he pulled a couple of chicks up from the crowd which opened a floodgate. About 10 chicks and a dude proceeded to get on stage and help Shout Out Louds sing this belter, and one guy even got his hands on some drunk sticks and was playing in tune with the song.

The set winded down with the tracks 'Show Me Something New', and 'Impossible' which had the lead singer actually forgetting an entire verse of the song! no matter, this song featured this cool double sided cow bell-type instrument which the lead singer was banging furiously during the song. The Shout Out Louds made their exit from the stage pretty much to give everyone abit of a breather. They came back out after a couple of minutes and slowly built up into a single of their new album called 'Walls'. What made this song special and really what capped off an amazing set was during a guitar solo half way through the song, they started playing a cover of 'Walk Like an Egyptian' by The Bangles which got a massive cheer from the crowd.

The song finally ended along with the set, and The Shout Out Louds received a well deserved applause. Overall it was a fantastic and well groomed set, put simply The Shout Out Louds didn't really put a foot wrong. I'm seriously looking forward to see Broken Bells in about 10 days which is also at the Commodore Ballroom, and also kicks off a series of 6 gigs in 7 days which should be epic!!!!

Walls (walk like an egyptain)