Damien Jurado and Okkervil River @ Neumos Last Night

Damien Jurado did that thing he does at Neumos last night. We always felt like this kind of stuff would make for perfect incidental music for the slow motion epiphany moment in movies where the hated-on underdog character finally realizes that he is in fact a bad ass, and then savors in slow motion the anticipation of imminent ass kicking - but maybe we're just projecting. There exists enough of a soft spot in the collective Seattlest black heart of hate for this music that we can enjoy snide smack downs like this, and even agree somewhat with hate like this - "But if you'd spent your entire musical career trawling the same highway, always stuck between gears, you'd be tired, too... wallowing, as ever, in romantic stagnancy..." and yet still continue to appreciate the man's work without our tastes feeling threatened in the least. Anyway, the show was basically good, with a more dreamy and contemplative sound than most of the live music we usually see.

Later, the crowd metastasized; Okkervil River was clearly the main draw of the night. Neumos seemed even more packed than that final show of Guided By Voices, witnessed by various Seattlest people there a thousand years ago. Our daily destination point Seattle Metblogs provides an informative, effusive appreciation worth checking out. We agree with the gist of that post, although credulous hype like "stunning" and "life-changing" sounds a little bit like overkill (sadly there just aren't enough brain cells left in the Seattlest hive mind to produce an Okkervil / Overkill pun worth posting, so we'll just leave it at that).