While The Heat From In Their Pockets Could Burn Marks Into Their Legs

So the other evening was one of those shows that kind of blindsides. You think it's like this but it's really like this, yeah? Showing up at 9:oo with the crowd of high schoolers dressed up like record store clerks, pushing up the staircase through the crowd of promgoers from the room below (a bit surreal, all the tiaras and evening gowns), and then filtering into the underage melting pot to stare at the light show and the glowing tv screens. You could tell things were going to be a little different, as there were boys with eyeliner comingling with the girls in tight jeans and studded belts. And that "little different" was all the result of a little band called the Faint. Suddenly, the pack of small girls disappated and was replaced by sweating sometimes shirtless boys flinging themselves about, and the area once reserved for swooning turned into a teeming mass of violent bodies pressing up towards the microphones.

I never thought I'd see that at a Bright Eyes show.

Let's be honest. I don't know the Faint that well. I used to say that I hated them, that they were the only band on Saddle Creek that I utterly disliked. Then I found out that Joy Electric had them do a remix of one of their songs, so I had to accept them. Therefore, I begrudgingly made my way to liking one of their songs, but still avoided them. But I have to say, as the sweat from my eyebrows was stinging and the topless guy in front of me slipped back and forth like a fish spawning towards Todd Baechle, the Faint did a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel and any resentfulness I still carried evaporated.

"The only girl I ever loved...was born with roses in her eyes" but imagine with the entire pulsing electronic grinding rock of the Faint to back it up. One of the best moments of the show, really, the moment where I completely lost the awareness of the elbows and fists flying through the air around me.

It was like a video game, I think. There were different levels, and different objects to collect to ensure your survival. IF you were to ever reach the front for Conor and Co., you had to brave the thicket of testosterone that signalled the front lines for the Faint's crowd. Water bottle in hand (ice coldness long gone luke warm from the sardines packed around), breathing in hot salt air and elbowing ever so carefully in the general direction of the stage, making sure to use the impetus of the people behind you, throwing deeply apologetic expressions if knocked too roughly into a total stranger. If your timing's off, you could lose it all, being forced to extricate your parched body from the throng in order to either get water or collapse in a heap on the ballroom floor. If you drink first, then buy water, and you dole out that water very carefully to yourself, it'll last long enough that you don't have to worry about dehydration. Just swollen lips or crushed feet or the fact that your shoe may very well fall off. In between songs and sets, jockey for a position free of hazards like the Girl Wearing Her Long Hair Down and a Scratchy Wool Jacket, who I had the misfortune to be stuck behind for a good five minutes, inhaling wayward scented strands and shuddering everytime my bare arm came up against her ridiculous apparel.

But then, in the heat of the interim between sets, when everybody was growing restless and shifting from foot to foot in their limited space, some gracious soul up at the front took to passing out cold bottles of water, a power-up, if you will, and they passed from hand to hand, swig to swig, until the last drops had been drained.