Young the Giant live

I really have no idea what to call this post, but I can tell you that it's going to be about seeing Young the Giant live in concert at the House of Blues this past Sunday night. It was a stellar concert at one of my favorite places to be at a show, and I saw them at what was the perfect time to see a band - right after the debut of their second album (Mind Over Matter came out in January). They played 11 of the 13 songs off Mind Over Matter, and 6 of the 12 from Young the Giant, their first album. One thing I can say about these guys is that they're very in tune with their performance. This might be something that comes to bands after their second album, after they've been touring for a while, but here is some of what I mean:

• They opened with "Slow Dive" and "Anagram," their first two songs off Mind Over Matter. I totally saw this coming because if you listen to the two songs consecutively, it pretty much screams "play this as your concert opener." It reminded me a lot of Coldplay's opener, when they played "Mylo Xyloto" and "Hurts Like Heaven," the first two songs off their most recent album, to start their concert.
• YTG's second album is a lot edgier than the first. For one, there's a lot more feedback and distortion in the guitars, which is my favorite new trend of music-playing, and a lot of the songs are more upbeat, in contrast to the summer-y feeling of their debut, self-titled album.
• Again, these phenomena seem more likely to occur the more a band performs, but they seemed to play all the right songs at the right moments. They finished their set with "Crystallized," one of the singles off Mind Over Matter, and their encore set was "Apartment," "Mind Over Matter," and "My Body." The bookends of the encore being possibly their two best-known songs off their first album, and the middle being the namesake of their second album. Seemed like it was an easy setlist for them to write.

Music-wise, they were AWESOME. They sounded really good and you could easily see that they were fully in every song during their performance. They had a fun time, we had a fun time, and it was just a giant group of people having an awesome time. Which is what concerts should be. So yeah, Young the Giant kicked ass, and I would totally see them again. I've actually never seen one of my favorite bands twice, despite having seem all of them (except Foo Fighters) once. Either way...they were great. Here's "In My Home," one song they actually didn't play from Mind Over Matter.