Spoon at the Wiltern LG Theater

Nathan had purchased a bunch of extra tickets to the Spoon concert at the Wiltern Theater tonight, hoping to make a healthy profit on E-Bay sales after the show sold out. Well, for reasons unknown, the show never actually did sell out. Tickets were still available when he arrived in front of the theater at 7:45 to scalp his extras.

I wasn't with him, of course. Doors didn't even open until 8, and there were two opening acts, and I'll be damned if I'm going to hang around inside the Wiltern Theater drinking $6 beers for 2.5 hours waiting for Spoon to play. So he went early to sell the tickets, and I arranged to meet him at around 10, which was my guesstimate for the time Spoon would actually take the stage.

I was almost on the money. In fact, in a surprise move, the opening acts hustled on and off the stage, and Spoon went on at around 9:45. I was just arriving as they broke into their first song, "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" from their latest album, "Gimme Fiction." I made it in time to find a pretty kickass spot, off to the side but surprisingly close to the stage.

I did not have time, however, to locate Nathan. We found one another about 3 songs into Spoon's terrific 80 minute set. He was (in retrospect, predictably) hanging back by the bar. A word about Nathan: He is 12 feet tall.

Okay, maybe not 12. But well over 6. Sometimes in bars, he tells people he's 7 feet tall. On rare occasions, they believe him. I bring up his egregious height here because, at concerts, hanging out next to him can be something of a liability. I can't really forge forward through the crowd like I usually would in pursuit of a clear vantage point. You can't really cut in front of regular-sized people if you're traveling with a Giant...they get kind of irritated.

So it took a little cajoling to find a spot where I, at 5'9", could see and where Nathan, at 6'5"-ish, wasn't blocking the view of several Lollypop Guild members.

Fortunately, we were rewarded for our labors. The show was terrific. I had never seen Spoon before, and I didn't really expect them to rock out quite like they did. If you listen to their albums, they're always really clean and polished. Meticulously arranged hooky indie rock songs that are pared down, minimalist, and held together by the exceptionally tight drumming of band co-founder Jim Eno.

Spoon tore through a ton of great songs, mainly tracks from their two most recent albums, this year's "Fiction" and 2002's "Kill the Moonlight." They ended the main set with my favorite song off of "Moonlight," "Jonathan Fisk," and that album's "Small Stakes" and "The Way We Get By" were some of the most enjoyable, infectious songs of the entire set. As I said, I was impressed with the energy and intensity of the band's live performance, because the albums are so tasteful and restrained. I wouldn't go so far as to categorize the show as "loose" or "messy," but it kind of felt like seeing a really talented garage band with a killer catalog of songs. More reminiscent, in other words, of seeing The Strokes than The Decemberists.

In addition to playing almost the entire new album, Spoon did make room for a few older numbers, and some of them were the highlights of the entire set. "Car Radio" off of their underrated 1998 LP "Series of Sneaks" provided a showcase for lead singer Britt Daniel's emotive, McCartney-esque wail, and a memorable rendition of "Fitted Shirt" from 2001's "Girls Can Tell" was another high point.

All in all, a pretty terrific time. I can generally gauge the quality of an indie rock show fairly easily...If I'm tired of being at a concert and want to go home by the encore, it's a mediocre show. If the house lights come up and I find myself thinking that the band didn't play for very long, the show kicked ass. Thus far in 2005, almost all of the shows I've seen have been in this second category. Really, besides the KROQ 2005 Grim Inland Death March, I've had an exceptional year for concert-going.