Show Review: Andrew Bird/Le Loup

09/17/07 The Granada, Lawrence

Andrew Bird's show last night at The Granada ended up being a pretty intimate affair. Usually Andrew is joined by percussionist/keyboardist Martin Dosh, but he wasn't able to make the show. The performance definitely suffered a bit as all the songs were much more stripped down then the full, orchestral sound found on his albums. Andrew uses loops and samples to create his sound live, playing every instrument on stage for each song. Although the absence of Dosh was evident, Andrew still was able to be surprisingly engaging. It was very interesting to see him working so hard to lay down the violin and other parts before grabbing his guitar to fill out each song. I was a little disappointed to not hear the lush sounds found on his records, but the reason I was a bit let down might be the same reason someone else was blown away by the show. Overall, it was a good performance though.


The opening band, Le Loup, hail from Washington DC and they stole the show for me. I wasn't very familiar with their music before, I had only heard a couple of songs on their Myspace page and read a few reviews of their album, the unfortunately titled The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. They reminded me of Arcade Fire live; there are seven members on stage and at any time five or six of them were all singing at once. The choir-like vocals along with a loud and grand sound is definitely what made me think of Arcade Fire. I hope to catch these guys sometime in the future playing a headlining show, because I wasn't ready for them to be done playing when they were. Le Loup made what would have been a mildly disappointing show into one I was glad I made the trip to Lawrence for.