MidPoint quick takes: Friday

TAKE #1: UMO, TORO, LOW ANTHEM

Brooklyn wunderkinds Ava Luna played before Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and they really impressed with their soulful vocals. After a 15-minute delay, UMO hit the stage and instead of doing a soundcheck like a lot of bands had been doing, they just started playing “Little Blu House” from their self-titled debut album, which caught the packed house off guard. New Zealand lead singer Ruban Nielson held his guitar to his chest and played that guitar like he was some sort of classic rock star.

Half of the audience stood up and head bobbed along, but the real crowd came for Toro y Moi.  Bringing a full band with him, Chaz Bundick maneuvered between several synths and keyboards, while the rest of the band added drums and guitar. His dancy beats immediately had the practically sold-out auditorium dancing and shouting his name, but after a few songs, it began to sound the same to me so I snuck out and checked out the Low Anthem in the theater next door.

Apparently, they’d started a half-hour late, enabling me to catch the last few songs. In contrast to Toro, the auditorium was extremely dark and quiet, the audience captivated by weepy, Americana ballads. Who needed bleeps and boops when you had members of Anthem playing an oboe, vintage instruments, hitting drums with bamboo sticks and plucking a stand-up bass. They played the apropos “To Ohio” on an acoustic guitar, the 9/11 “Man on Wire”-inspired tune “Boeing 737” and ended on “Smart Flesh” and an audience member yelled, “play two more, no, play six more!”

TAKE #2: CAPACITY CROWDS, STRFKR

The rest of the night consisted of strange occurrences. I briefly listened to Xiu Xiu at Artworks, but it was too stuffy in there. I tried to get into Deerhoof, but the venue was at capacity and people were hanging out on the stairs. According to my schedule, Gang Gang Dance went on at 11:30 p.m, but it turned out that was a misprint and they actually went on at midnight. Supposedly the venue was at capacity even though it was hardly crowded.

The DJ act opening for GGD was very bizarre and kind of annoying, so I booked it to the jam packed STRFKR show at MOTR where a queue a block long had formed. It took the band almost half an hour to soundcheck causing the restless crowd to shout things like, “C’mon, play already!”

After 1 a.m., they finally began their set of electro-pop gems, and the crowd became transfixed with dancing on chairs and throwing their hands in the air. If this dance party was a pre-cursor to Saturday night’s Cut Copy, the kids are really going to go crazy.

Covered in confetti-like laser beams, the band played a few cuts like “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second,” “Julius,” “German Love,” “Millions,” all-too-brief instrumental numbers and the video game sounding “Hard Smart Beta.” It was approaching 2 a.m. and everyone was still going strong except for me. I left before I got to hear their signature cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” but that’s what YouTube is for.

» Who did you love? Who did you discover? Post your take on MidPoint in the comments.