REVIEW: Phoenix w/ Mother Father @ The Palace 4/22

A little introduction to this review, I don’t know anything at all about Phoenix. Sure, their album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is/was wildly popular and played everywhere, but I never really got to listen to it. At the last minute I was able to snag tickets and head over to the Louisville Palace to catch their set with Mother Father from Nashville opening for them. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew it would be fairly packed as Phoenix are a widely recognized band, but I didn’t know it would be THAT packed at The Palace.

Mother Father was first to play before the Frenchmen took stage, and unfortunately I was only able to catch their last two songs. Their set contrasted Phoenix’s sound with some darker tones, but mixed well with the show. Even though I didn’t get to hear much of their music, they were nice chaps to talk at about music and comedy. Turns out their name is not from the Mr. Show quote, “Mother father chinese dentist”, but it’s all good nonetheless. I was able to grab a compact disc and 7″ to listen to, but you can check them out over here.

Well, let’s put it this way, people STOOD the ENTIRE TIME at The PALACE. The words in caps never go together. What happened?
Here is the breakdown of the above sentence. Phoenix were awesome. That’s all. This review could end right here and you would get the point. So as not to drag this out with things you already know about this band, we’ll stick to a few key points about this show.

Key point number one: People stood the entire time.  This may not sound like a big deal, but somehow this never seems to happen in Louisville, much less The Palace. People were crowding the aisles, much to Palace security’s dismay, but they looked as though they were all having a good time. I say let them crowd in the aisles, it proved for a much better experience than a half-filled, seated crowd with no energy. Let’s keep this going, and not just for the national acts (er, international), but for local artists at smaller shows as well. We can do this.

Key point number two: The entire production of the show. From the crisp sound to the incredible lighting. I mean, who puts a spotlight on a metronome and can make it look cool? Come to think of it, has anyone else ever spotlighted a metronome? Ah, if only our real camera would have been allowed in the venue then the high quality photos you are used to seeing here on Backseat Sandbar could have been posted. Alas, we are stuck with these photos which do not not do justice for how radiant the venue and stage looked that evening.

Key point number three: They were actually really good. No sarcasm about that at all, it really was a great show. At the very end of the encore, Thomas Mars came into the crowd, even past the pit area, to sing and float across the sea of people. Never before have I seen that kind of interaction at the Palace. Also, after the show Thomas talked to a small group of us for almost 30 minutes about music, film, The Smiths, and everything in between. We even spotted a few more Phoenix members and crew at Zanzabar later that night. Just too bad they didn’t catch The Pass who played there earlier that evening, though the Phoenix guys kept talking about wanting to hear authentic Kentucky bluegrass music. They’ll just have to come back again sometime and we’ll make sure they hear some live and in person. A bluegrass Phoenix remix? Hmmm…