Show Review: Bjork @ The Pearl (@ the Palms) in Las Vegas

Confetti @ Bjork in Las Vegas, originally uploaded by catdirtrecords.

I can't believe I'm typing this, but I was actually excited about staying at the Palms. In retrospect, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but the Palms is nothing special. In fact, if I could do it over I would have booked at the Gold Coast across the street.

We were in town to see the Bjork. Fair to say I married a Bjork die hard. Fact: We eloped to Denver and saw Bjork at Red Rocks. Of course, we saw Bjork at Coachella. We've flown to Boise to see Matthew Barney, Bjork's husband, explain the Cremaster cycle. We've flown to New York City to see all of the Cremaster movies in seequence (it takes 10 hours).

So on the Bjork obsess-o-meter a 24 hour trip to Las Vegas to see the last United States date on her Volta tour barely even registers. Honestly, it seemed like a totally obvious thing to do.

The show was at the Pearl, which is the relatively new 2000+ seating venue at the Palms. The Pearl is a very nice, if totally antiseptic venue. It has to be the best mid sized venue in las vegas- we saw Sigur Ros at the Hard Rock a few years back and the Hard Rock couldn't hold a candle to the sound and design at the Pearl. It's hard to believe that the pearl seats more then 2000 people- it felt like we were seeing a show at venue that sat 500. Part of that had to do with our amazing seats, but the acoustics were very def. state of the art.

Ratatat opened- just last year Fifty on Their Heels opened for Ratatat at the Art Bar, then we saw them open for Daft Punk in Los Angeles and now this. I like Ratatat more and more every time I see them. I was geuinely excited by the prospect of seeing them at a venue with such good sound. Wasn't dissapointed. I don't think Ratatat gets the credit they deserve. They've earned their own headlining tour. I would have to pencil them in for a pretty decent slot at Coachella 2008. In fact, I'm kind of shocked they haven't played Coachella before.

Did I mention that the show started promptly at 8 PM? That Bjork took the stage promptly at 915 PM? On the one hand, I appreciated the punctuality, but it wasn't very "rock and roll".

Bjork came out accompanied by an all girl twelve piece horn section. She had a drummer, two dj's and a pianist/keyboardist. This is still the "volta" tour so there was ALOT of Volta material and some of her greatest hits sprinkled in- Joga, Pagan Poetry, Hyperballad & a totes kick ass version of Army of Me. Personally, I'm not so much about Volta and I'm looking forward to her moving on, but this was probably the best Bjork show I'll ever see, mostly because of the venue & the fact that we couldn't have been more then 20 feet away from her the whole time.

The encore, her new single "Declare Independence" was punctuated by an explosion of confetti- pictured above. It was a pretty great moment. I would def, def go back to Vegas to see a show at the Pearl. Maybe for Avril next April? Ha, ha-j/k. The pics are on flickr, the other review type things are on yelp.

How was Louis XIV at holiday hootenany? Can't wait to hear about that. Did they do their hit single? Hope so.