Last night, I saw The New Pornographers play at The Warsaw, a new venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The show was so much fun – the audience was one of the coolest, cutest crowds I’ve ever been in, most everyone was singing and dancing along, and the opening acts, Matt Pond PA and The Frames, had a really warm reception as well. The New Pornographers were in fine form, playing more or less the same set as when I saw them at The Bowery Ballroom a couple months back, but added a couple extra covers and another new song. The best part of the show was that for the final third of the show, the band starting inviting the audience on stage – starting first with two impossibly cute couples slowdancing to the beginning of The Fake Headlines, but then perfectly switching into a more rocking slam dance when the song started to rock in the middle. The first set ended with an amazing version of Letter From An Occupant with about 20 people on stage dancing along, the rest of the room singing along. For the encore, they played five more songs, all of them very upbeat dance numbers, with more and more people getting onstage to bop around and act goofy. Yes, I was among them for the final two numbers, concluding with one of my personal favorites, Centre For Holy Wars. I wish every night could be as fun as that – Carl Newman said something about it being one of the best shows that he’d ever played, one of the best crowds he’s ever played to. I have trouble imagining crowds getting any better than that.

I know most of my blog readership is located in the UK, and to them I say this: The New Pornographers will be releasing their debut LP Mass Romantic on Matador Europe in March. Go see them when they come to the UK to tour. Please.

By the way, that was my first time at the Warsaw. It’s a great hall – it’s pretty large (larger than Bowery Ballroom and Irving Plaza, but not as big as Roseland), and it’s a bit like a cross between a VFW/wedding reception hall and a small high school auditorium. Pretty good sound, very pleasant ambience, high ceilings, low stage, great clientele of bands coming to play there (Le Tigre, Guided By Voices, Blonde Redhead, etc…) – the only problem is that it’s in a lousy place as far as commuting via subway goes. I had to get from there to Prospect Heights where I was staying last night, and it took about an hour and a half, between walking quite a ways to an L train stop that was running properly (Lorimer!), and then having to make several connections looping all the way around Brooklyn to Manhattan to back through Brooklyn where I was headed. Agh. If I was living where I used to in Brooklyn, it would have been similarly difficult – I really wish a better intra-Brooklyn subway line existed, something that could connect DUMBO/Brooklyn Heights to Williamsburg/Greenpoint to Park Slope/Prospect Heights….