Bright Eyes with Gruff Rhys
Bronson Centre, Ottawa ON – 12th June 2006

We ordered tickets for the Bright Eyes concert after returning home from the phenomenal Hawksley Workman concert at the same venue a month or so ago. Hawksley owned that venue that night, really getting the crowd involved in an intimate and memorable show. The Bright Eyes show however, never really lived up to the expectations, it was still a pretty good show though, the highlight of which for me was when Conor Oberst sang “First Day of My Life” accompanied only by a solo acoustic guitar. I kind of wish the rest of the show could have been more like that, with a low key accompaniment. Don’t get me wrong though, the band were great, switching it up between guitar, mandolin, keyboards, trumpets and drums, but it was at least half way through the show before Oberst even addressed the crowd, and even then only after a prompt from an audience member.

What made the night for me though, was the performance of Gruff Rhys! The Super Fury Animals frontman played an eclectic mix of tracks, accompanied by a crazy collection of props, including a tweeting toy bird, some kind of humming box, one of those tubes that you twirl around your head to make banshee noises and what looked like a kids voice changing megaphone. The fact that he sang the majority of his songs in Welsh didn’t even detract from the show either, it was a great little performance. Gruff also came out to join Bright Eyes for an encore at the end of the night too, much to the delight of the audience.

Gruff Rhys – Colonize the Moon MP3 (right click and “save as”)