Surprise Presence


Carissa's Wierd played in San Francisco last night. On behalf of San Francisco, I'd like to apologize to them. People here are really nice most of the time, so I don't really understand why the crowd was so rudely loud. In order to compensate, the club way over-amped them, and the whole deal spiraled off into an unfortunate vicious circle of poor acoustics. They also didn't play my favorite songs, about which I am disappointed, but apparently the accordion broke back in Phoenix, so they haven't been playing any of the accordion songs on the legs of the tour since then.

Other than these issues, it was a great show. Somewhere while I wasn't paying attention, they added a sixth member; their sound is richer without being thicker. They played a few new songs, some of which are gorgeous. And, most wonderfully of all, they had a not-available-in-stores tour CD with them, on which I quite literally spent every dollar I had on me. If they were a band that released singles, it would have been a B-sides collection: some freaky oddities and remixes, but also some beautiful songs that inexplicably missed the album cut.

I cannot do proper justice to how profoundly at peace their music puts me, though I have tried several times. This time around, I'll just say that the world is a much better place for their existence, and leave it at that.