Got a chance to check out the Beirut/Final Fantasy show last night and it was pretty great. I actually almost bailed on it, too. I fractured my elbow after tripping over some Hot Topic reject at Bamboozle so I kind of wanted to take it easy. However, as some of you may recall, Beirut put out my second favorite record of last year and I have yet to see them in a proper way. Just half a show at the McCarren Pool last summer and a blur at this year’s SXSW. Yeah, so I “manned up” and hit the show.

I also had to see Final Fantasy. Seeing as I have been a total Final Fantasy nerd since I was like 10, it would be kind of retarded for me to not see a band of the same name. So I got there in time to check out the entire set by Owen Pallet, who also is known to play with some band called Arcade Fire.

He performed (mostly) alone. Just him and his violin and some occasional keys. However, he kept on looping different violin parts which gave all of the songs a very full feel. He also had a woman accompanying him on stage that was layering different slides on an overhead projector that added a surprisingly beautiful element to the show.The Set was also highlighted by one duet with Zach Condon of Beirut and a final song withZach and a few additional members from his band.  All in all, it was a beautiful set. At one point I remember turning to my friend and remarking that it felt like Owen was a musician was supposed to be. Creative and talented. As much as I love Beirut’s music, Final Fantasy stole the show.

With that said, Beirut was still a great performance. Zach has built his band up considerably to include multiple string and horn players on top of drums, bass and an accordion. The guy writes beautiful songs and I feel like once the band has time to figure their live show out, it’s going to be something special. For now, it just felt that for the number of people on stage, you would expect more sound.Please don’t get the idea that the set was bad though as that is far from the truth. There was energy throughout the set and you simply knew that the entire band was having a great time on stage. At one point, Zach made a reference to being called one of the best drunken front men out there. This was after he accidentally lost the drum stick of his rasp (see also: drunkenly let it slip from his fingers.) It didn’t matter though because it was fun. To add to the jovial mood, confetti was being tossed all over the place. Especially during the final couple songs of the encore that featured not only Owen of Final Fantasy but an absurd amount of extra trumpet players. I think I counted something like 15 of them on stage with all of the other musicians.

Great show. If I had let me stupid elbow keep me fro seeing it, I’d be kicking myself right now.