New Pornographers & Okkervil River @ the Crofoot

(Okkervil River, courtesy of my cell phone)

Last night my friends and I went to go see the New Pornographers and Okkervil River at the beautiful Crofoot Ballroom in Pontiac (seriously, it’s so nice). Okkervil River was phenomenal and totally blew me away. Will Sheff has amazing stage presence and his voice actually was right on live, even the high parts in “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe.” So, so good.

It was my sixth time seeing the New Pornos so it really wasn’t anything new, although Neko Case being there was definitely a plus. However, there were sound problems at the beginning (thank-you to my friend Tony for yelling for them to turn down the bass), and although I really do like Challengers, they definitely played too many songs from it. At least they didn’t play “The Spirit of Giving In,” my all-time least favorite NP song, and they did get in some good ones, like “The Bleeding Heart Show,” “Mass Romantic,” “These are the Fables,” and others, and they were fun, as always.

Best part — I got to call the last song of the encore! They were taking requests and A.C. Newman pointed at me to pick a song (“Letter from an Occupant,” which everyone around me and I were yelling for), so that was pretty sweet.