Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Indigo Girls at Summerstage

On Tuesday night, I went with friends to Central Park's Summerstage to see the Indigo Girls. Their record "Hammer and a Nail" was the first CD that I bought, when CDs still came in long cardboard boxes, after having seen them play a few songs on a special "songwriter's" episode of Austin City Limits. They have grown into astute, focused songwriters, and the new record, released independently last March, is one of their best. It was a wonderful show.

I am seriously dumbfounded by Amy & Emliy's sheer lack of pretension and cynicism. So often, after their nearly twenty-five years playing music together, bands can't seem to figure it out, they break-up, they get too interested in things they're not good at, or they let the whole fame/success/riches/fandom thing turn them into caricatures. The Indigo Girls have simply avoided all of this, and remained, perhaps by sheer force of their personalities alone, open, hopeful and, oh yeah, extremely adept guitar players.

For those of you interested, the setlist:
-Love of Our Lives
-Sugar Tongue
-Fill It Up Again
-Yield
-Power of Two
-Driver Education
-What Are You Like
-Fugitive
-Pendulum Swinger
-Ozilline
-Fleet of Hope
-Faye Tucker
-Deconstruction
-Ghost of the Gang
-Get Out the Map
-Shame on You
-Digging for Your Dream
-Romeo & Juliet
-I'll Change
-Kid Fears (with Matt Nathanson)
-Closer to Fine (with Matt Nathanson)
==
-Prince of Darkness
-Second Time Around
-Galileo

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