Asobi Seksu at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (10/09/09)

This was a perfect bill for the tiny 7th Street venue in Minneapolis: Asobi Seksu, Lonely Dear, and Anna Ternheim.

Since I've been closely following each of these artists through my various album reviews and show reviews by other W♥M writers. What I expecting was "yellow fever" and "Teeny tiny Yuki" and "audience sing-along". I do suggest you check the previous reviews, since I probably won't add much to it. All are true, with the exception of Asians in the audience (there were a few, but not like overwhelming "itwasallyellow" moment).

Anna Ternheim (annaternheim.com / myspace.com/annaternheim) was the only artist that we haven't reviewed live, so I was quite excited to see her. Although she's not that well-known in the States, she's quite famous in her home country of Sweden (having won both "Best Female Artist" and "Album of the Year" on the Swedish Grammy). So for her to tour here, at very intimate settings, is such a boon. In fact, there was a group of Swedish fans (like six of them) who visited Minneapolis just to see Anna in such a small venue.

Ternheim's "band" was basically stolen from Loney Dear (we'll get to him later). They adapted well to playing (and backup singing) her songs. My favorite from the set was, of course, "What Have I Done". This song feature this distinctive violin, which was replicated by pre-recording, so no live violas on stage.

So embarrassingly enough, I only had a brief chance to play around with the Pen camera's setting. At the show, for Anna Ternheim, I could not figure out how to change my shutter speed and ISO settings. Thanks to Erik who looked it up to tell me that the up/down/left/right d-pad doubles as a wheel! Who knew?

The only thing I savaged out of Ternheim is this video of her performing "Let It Rain" (see video), which includes the lyrics that would inspired the title of her latest album, Leaving on a mayday.

Lonely Dear ♥ 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (10/09/09)

The same band that played for Ternheim came back for Emil Svanängen, aka Loney Dear (loneydear.com / myspace.com/loneydear). Loney has been doing this musician for a while now. You can just tell, the way he handles himself on the stage and the way he manipulate his audience - yes, he made the audience do that "na-na-na-na" chorus from "The Meter Marks OK".

Compared to Ternheim's set Loney's set was much longer, or at least it felt more like a full set. To be honest, it seems that Loney could continue to play for another hour. He kept asking the soundguy (who was probably with the touring bands as it was not the typical staff guy) if they could have four more minutes to play one more song.

Asobi Seksu Setlist ♥ 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (10/09/09)

I read that Asobi Seksu's Yuki was small, but wow, she's really small. Sometime, I think the loud noise of guitar, bass, drums, and effects, drowns out Yuki's voice. So, combined with my already damaged hearing, I could not make out what she's singing about. Something about cats and strawberries and rain or something.

While this may be attributed to the fact that they were already late on arriving at 7th Street, due to some detours driving from Vancouver, Canada, which resulted in no soundcheck, I just think the band is normally loud when played live.

One thing I will mention is that the band is incredibly hard to shoot, due to poor lighting, because they wanted to emphasis on their own line of blue lights and strobes effect lights and combined with Yuki's hair-in-face and/or looking away.

They started off with "New Years", a Japanese song that's been a staple of their intro song since 2006. They played "Thursday", which I know a few people liked, and for the finale, Yuki took over the drumming-action on "Red Sea". The final song was ridden with all-out strobe light city. It's very cool effects when you see them on stage, blinking in and out, but yeah, not so much for photosensitive epilepsy people.

This is one of the best bill for a band I've seen in a while, so it's definitely worth it to see them all together.

PS, Stay tuned for Kate G's update on Asobi Seksu when they arrive in New York on the 16^th of October.