(Via Jennywong’s Flickr)

A week ago I caught my first concert here in this crazy city.  The band was Handsome Furs.  The husband wife pair hail from another city I love deeply, Montreal.  You might know the singer of Handsome Furs, Dan Boeckner, since he is also the singer/guitarist for the excellent band Wolf Parade.

Their music is reminiscent of some of the other indie music coming out of Montreal, just with a stronger more beat driven pulse.  The band is simply  Mr. Boeckner singing and playing the guitar while his wife mans the drum machine/synthesizer.  They make a helluva lot of noise just between the two of them and while deciding whether or not I should go the concert it was their big noisy impact evident in their music videos that convinced me that the show would be awesome.  Obviously, I was not mistaken.

Not only was this my first concert but it was also my first time to Yin Yu Tang, which seems to be the premier place for interesting contemporary music.  It’s a nice place except for the fact that it would be considered small even in Burlington, Vermont let alone in a metropolis like Shanghai.  They make up for this very disappointing fact by having a large park in their backyard where people can sit at tables and drink beer under the star-less sky.

The opening act was a local band named Boys Climbing Ropes.  They were good, though there were so many people crowded around me that I couldn’t fully appreciate the music by dancing, or in fact moving my body in any way.  After getting some air out back between acts my friend and I went back in and prepared for the Handsome Furs, getting some beers staking out a spot in the back.

Even before the Handsome Furs came on, the small room we were all crowded into was sweltering.  By the end of the night everyone’s shirts were quite literally soaked through, don’t know that I’ve ever sweated that much at a concert before.  The show was everything you want from a concert, I don’t think I could have asked for anything more from my first concert in Shanghai.  Electro-clash punk indie rock really hits the spot for the young and energetic.  The show was loud, fun, crazy, and exciting in all the right ways.  The band was sweating in the stifling heat and seemed to be having as much fun as us in the audience.  We were all really into the music and they showered us with appreciation, going to great lengths to tell us how much they loved Shanghai and it’s people.  All in all a fantastic night of music.  God, I hope we get more good bands coming through Shanghai.

Here’s a video from their night in Shanghai playing, ironically enough, “Hate This City”: