Days of begging, days of theft

I went to the Florence and the Machine concert last night, and it was an interesting experience. The place was dreadful, the audience - young. One of the first things I noticed was the seemingly universal understanding of the (English) stage banter. Literally the whole room - around 2000 people, give or take - laughed when she said she'd only been on a "quiet tour of Poland" so far, so she'd seen a lot of Polish churches, but hadn't sung in a Polish warehouse before. Lingua franca, no two ways about it.

As for the performance itself... let's put it this way: the audience delivered, and the artist quickly caught up with it. She opened with Howl, which is one of my 3 favorite songs of hers, and it was very disapointing. Sounded really lackluster, almost phoned-in. She didn't even try to hit any of the high... well, I don't even know if you can call them "notes" if we're talking about four full verses of the chorus. Then went Kiss With a Fist which really got the audience going, and I think over the course of the next few songs it dawned on her that these people were really responsive, and really into her. By Between Two Lungs (#6) she was belting it all out to the point where I was actually awestruck - and I don't even like that number. The absolute turning point, however, was The Drumming Song, which was just balls-to-the-wall awesome, and drove the audience into a bona fide frenzy. To wit (unfortunately the clip cuts off before the best part, which can be found here, but with shitty audio):

I think it was after this one that she suffered a mild sensoric overload and started just walking back and forth along the edge of the stage, staring slackjawed at the audience, hand on her mouth. I doubt I'll ever get tired of seeing musicians' first reaction to Polish audiences. The requisite declarations of this being the best gig of the tour followed, and kept resurfacing throughout the rest of the show. Which was from then on stellar, in a very frantic, heartfelt, no holes barred kind of way (I could almost feel her vocal cords fraying as she charged through Dog Days Are Over). Awesome, awesome stuff.

My only gripe is subjective: 2 out of 3 of my favorite songs were disappointing live. I wish she had opened with something else, so I could have heard Howl treated with the sort of reckless abandon she tapped into during the 2nd part of the show, but Blinding was actually the last song before the encore, and it still did not work. Once it's stripped of the gothic, spatial studio trimmings, you're left with just drums, an overwhelmed harp, and flat, militant vocals.

My last impression, as I watched her dart around the stage in that flowy frock, singing about Midas, bloodied feet, and the walls of Dreaming, was feeling really grateful that the current musical Zeitgeist actually allowed this sort of sensibility to enter the mainstream, because I can't wait for next offerings.