Death Cab for Cutie, Cold War Kids, Ra Ra Riot at Roy Wilkins Auditorium, St Paul (4/15/09)

Ra Ra Riot started the show exactly at seven and went off the stage by 7:20pm. What a brief set list.

Cold War Kids – Hang Me Up To Dry

Cold War Kids came on around 8 and did about forty-five minutes of music. They did their big hit songs (“Hang Me Up To Dry”, “Hospital Beds”) early in their set, but failed to get the audience to move along. I suspect this has more to do with the youth crowd to be mad Death Cab fans, because when Cold War are in their elements (headlining with their fan base), they perform exceptionally well.

I am speaking from experience because I recently saw them headline and the audience loved and the energy they gave off, fed into Cold War Kids and they sweated and teared through their setlist. Watch the video! Unfortunately, not tonight. Tonight mostly saw the band singing songs and heading right into the next without so much as pauses for applauses.

The last three songs, singer Nathan Willett snuck behind his piano and did three piano-type songs and basically away from center stage view.

Also, whoever was working the lights, they must’ve really had it in for Cold War Kids.  The lights was either white, yellow-ish, or none at all.  This is in huge contrast to Death Cab, who enjoyed a variety of reds, blues, and smoke machine…  The lighting really made a huge difference, if you ask me.

Anyroad, before we get to Death Cab for Cutie, I have to explain that I’ve seen the band before in 2001 at the 7th Street Entry for $5. People who live in Minnesota know that the 7th Street is a tiny venue. We reckon it can only hold about 200 people without choking itself. So that was then, a very nice and smokey and not to mention intimate setting to see Death Cab.

How far they’ve come! They are now doing 5,000 capacity sized venue. And although it didn’t sell out, I would hazard at least 60% of tickets was sold, based on my asian math perception skills (that didn’t even make sense, it’s 1:30am as I’m writing this). Anyway, floor tickets are the cheapest – at a whopping $49-ish a ticket. The guy next to me said with all the fees involved (this is why I hate ticketmaster), he paid $98 for two tickets online!

For the fans, it was worth every penny… they sang (yes, they all sang along) to every song. HUGE reception to “I Will Possess Your Heart” with its 300-minute epic music intro. This is followed by everyone’s favorite acoustic-only song, “I Will Follow You into the Dark”, followed by “Cath…”, followed by the ba-ba song of “The Sound of Settling”. Ben Gibbard had the audience eating out of his hands.

For the encore, they did three songs, I’m sure one of them was brand new from their new EP and the other was “Transatlanticism”.

It looks like they’re continuing on their very successful, mostly sold-out tour. So even if you wanted to see them, you’re probably already out of luck – but of course, if you’re a huge fan, you probably have your tickets in advance.

Cold War Kids’ latest album is called Loyalty to Loyalty from Downtown Music (get a copy at amazon) and the very popular Death Cab’s latest is called Narrow Stairs from Atlantic Records. Not sure what their current relationship is with Barsuk, but Ra Ra Riot is on it and it’s still one of my favorite record label 🙂

PS, no photos for this show, because of the strict anti-camera from the security people.