Skinny Love in Mesa

I went to see indie rock band Bon Iver last night at the Mesa Arts Center. I'd never been there before and it's pretty impressive: a post-modern $98 million, 3-building complex currently in its fifth season since its opening. I enjoyed the architecture; very sleek and angular, yet airy and inviting.

For those of you not familiar with Mesa, it's a sleepy bedroom community in the Eastern part of the valley. Like many of the Phoenix suburbs it's fast-growing and quickly closing in on half a million people. Although it is the third-largest city in the state it's hardly a destination for anything, and Forbes named it one of America's Top 10 Boring Cities last year (along with neighboring Chandler and Gilbert, AZ.)

When I drove to the concert and entered Mesa I passed an endless series of interchangeable intersections completely devoid of individuality: strip malls, gas stations and chain restaurants as far as the eye can see. I bet even locals would be lost if you dropped them in a random intersection and removed the street signs.

As I reached Main St the cityscape changed a bit for the better - shops, restaurants, street parking and walkable sidewalks - almost resembling a traditional town. This will only make sense to some of you, but it reminded me of Hallsberg in Sweden with its one long main street. The problem is, Hallsberg has about 7,000 inhabitants and mainly exists because it's the intersection of two of Sweden's major railway lines - not exactly what a city with more people than Miami and St. Louis should be striving for.

However, you would certainly not find an art center like this one in Hallsberg! The Bon Iver show was inside the largest of the four theaters: the beautiful 1,600 seat Ikeda Theater, which was, if not sold out, close to full. I had a great seat in the 7th row with a perfect view of the stage.

View from the stage

The opening band, Megafaun, was surprisingly good until they decided to go into a 10-minute long self-indulgent instrumental, experimental noise fest. Apparently, they're childhood friends with Justin Vernon, and I'd recommend them as long as they stick to their more normal songs.

The Bon Iver show was quite good. I found both their album (For Emma, Forever Ago) and their EP (Blood Bank) to be uneven, and so was the show, but the highs more than made up for it. The album title track was very good live, as was Skinny Love, performed nearly identically to their performance on Letterman:

During the encore they covered the Loudon Wainwright III (Martha and Rufus' father) song The Swimming Song - probably best known to my fellow Swedes as the tune being hummed at the beginning of the TV-show Boktipset. For the last song they brought out Megafaun and jointly performed an all-acoustic song called Worried Mind, which got the whole audience to sing along even though I'm pretty sure nobody had heard it before. A nice finishing moment.

Lastly, I leave you with one more version of Skinny Love, which must have been an incredible experience for the lucky few who were there: