Clear Light

Saw Mi Ami perform no fewer than three times this week (Richmond, Baltimore, and DC). They're old time associates and friends of friends, I'm not just a crazy fan. Or maybe I am, a little bit. Each show really blew me away, even the Richmond one, which was attended only by thoroughly inked biker guys who were definitely not jamming Watersports on their Electra-Glide's stereo.

But yeah, they really dropped the A-bomb on my musical landscape. I had seen them before--when they were still a duo and then last February when they came through DC--and I liked it, but thought it just sounded liked a more stripped down version of Black Eyes. This time though, I don't know, it really clicked. The good shows had the same energy as some of the Evangelical church services that I went to back when I was writing the Service Industry column. The kind of thing where the band doesn't play hymns so much as they act as a foil for the preacher's gradually intensifying emotions and everything just gets crazier and crazier until some old lady passes out in the isle. Except at the DC show, it wasn't an old lady, just some tragic punker kid who had a septum piercing and smelled sort of like salami.