Stars are Awesome Musicians, Fans of The Wire

Last night I checked out the Stars concert at Sonar.  I've been listening to their latest album, In Our Bedroom after the War, and it's fantastic.  Seriously, you should really check out some of this band's music. 

So anyway, the show:  At first, it kind of seemed like they brought their B-game, the female lead kind of sucked on one of my favorite songs (The Night Starts Here) as they opened.  But the crowd really got into it the show and you could tell that the band got into the groove quickly.  It was awesome, but probably my favorite parts were when they gave shout-outs to The Wire, a show that every Baltimorean should watch and everyone who appreciates great television should love.  It's weird that I haven't posted anything about The Wire before... I think that may be the next post.  

Anyway, near the beginning of the show:

Amy Millan (female singer) - "We're really excited to be in Baltimore (a little noise from the crowd), we've never been here before, but we love The Wire (a lot of appreciative noise from the crowd).  We were looking for Bubbles on every street corner on our way in."

At the end of the show:

Torquil Campbell (male singer) - "This is going to be our last song.  I'm tempted to dedicate it to Stringer Bell (lots of cheering) ... [says some things I miss] ... did you know telling your mother you love her is ganster?  It's about the most gangster thing you can do; maybe if Stringer Bell had called his mother and told her he loved her, shit wouldn't have gone down so badly for him."

Other things that are great about Stars:

• They are so obviously Canadian, so absolutely Montreal, it's actually cool.
• They have a bunch of flowers arranged on the stage and periodically throw some of them into the audience.  This would be even awesomer if they were any good at throwing flowers.  Torquil (the male singer) definitely needs to work on his release point.  Still, throwing flowers to the audience was cool.
• The bassist definitely referred to our fair city as "B-more!" at one point.

Things that were not awesome about the show:

• The opening act was some douchebag who didn't even have a real band.  He got some random band to back him up within the week before the show.  Plus he can't write songs that don't sound stupid.  However, when he let the random band do a couple songs, they were much better, so I recommend Pash.