I saw them at First Avenue in Minneapolis. It was a good show, nothing really incredible, but pretty solid. They played almost all of Return to the Sea, only omitting "Humans" and "If." Nick forgot some of the lines to a few of the songs and had to sort of mumble a verse. Awkward! Or maybe I just couldn't hear him right. He had a haircut and my friend who was there "couldn't get over how tight his pants were." They also played a Kinks cover and I think three new songs, one of which - "The Arm" - was excellent and the other two of which were certainly good. The keyboardist had a NES controller belt buckle.
The opening acts were Subtitle and Blueprint (not Busdriver, I dunno why.) Subtitle was good, very down-to-earth, and performed almost like he was doing a comedy routine. Kinda sorta. He didn't even have a DJ, just an iPod. He was my favorite of the two rappers on "Where There's A Will There's A Whalebone," and he didn't disappoint me.
The other guy, Blueprint, I didn't care for at all. He seemed like he was trying too hard, and I didn't feel that his rapping was good enough to make up for it. Also he completely dicked around with Busdriver's verse (?) in WTAWTAW and, in my opinion, made it suck.
Still, overall a good show. Not amazing, but I wasn't disppointed.
