Destroyer at Black Cat 4/25

I feel like I don't have that much to actually say about the concert. So I'll start with the meal beforehand. We ate at Rice, full of delicious Asian fusion. There were green tea dumplings, ginger tempura (bean sprouts, pumpkin, and papaya!), and coconut grapefruit shrimp. There were also pumpkin empanadas, not something I would have expected, but were apparently good as well. And the worst pad thai I've ever had. Weird that they could do these amazing things with tempura but would horribly mangle the pad thai. It was just a sort of thick peanut sauce that didn't match the rest of the pad thai. But I'm not really a food blogger, so I'm not particularly useful when it comes to that.

On to the actual show, and opener Andre Ethier. Who is not the Dodgers outfielder, but the Canadian musician. If anyone ever wondered whether the Canadians were capable of making bad music and somehow forgot Celine Dion, just know that Andre Ethier had a rock flautist who also played saxophone. There is no such thing as rock flute. And that is the surest sign of a crappy band. But it just kept getting worse and worse, with some horrendously bad lyrics about black lips and Hebrew noses, and music that sounded like a fifth rate Dylan impersonator who just got Greetings from Asbury Park and thinks that the band would be better if only Clarence Clemons had a bigger role in the band and sucked harder. Really, I was this close to heckling them. So horribly horribly terrible. The Maestro and Tomahawk Chop agreed, but for some reason, MBG actually liked them. I can't figure that out.

Setlist from someone on Last.fm, as I failed again as a Merge fanboy, even though I own all their albums and EPs. I don't know them enough to say that I was disappointed by the setlist, as there was no way that I was going to know all the titles (all albums save Trouble in Dreams were purchased at once in a great bit of reasonableness and Merge fanboyism).

Rubies
Dark Leaves Form a Thread
Rivers
Foam Hands
From Oakland to Warsaw
Trembling Peacock
Leopard of Honor
My Favorite Year
Crystal Country
Tonight Is Not Your Night
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Certain Things You Ought To Know
Hey, Snow White

I only wished for Shooting Rockets, or even possibly a Bejar track from the Pornos, but I enjoyed the set anyway. Started a little late, as he didn't go on until 11:10ish, but he played for around 70 minutes, and was his normal shy self, but didn't seem overly drunk.

Who was drunk were the douchebags of the show: those guys who spent a good portion of the show trying to see how high they could get the bench on the back of the raised section off the ground by sitting on one edge. And then they'd fall off and it would make a big slamming sound. I hated them. Also: how could people not sell out the Black Cat on a Friday night for Destroyer? Did Andre Ethier really scare off everyone?

Overall, I'd put the opener as one of the worst bands I've ever seen, the food as sometimes delicious (tempura!) and sometimes crap (pad thai), and Destroyer as probably the least fun show I've been to in April, but when the earlier shows are New Pornos/Okkervil River, Spoon, and Jens Lekman, it's pretty difficult. And I'm seeing some more amazing shows over the next few weeks.