Mini-review/Summary: AIR and Kate Havnevik

So if I haven’t gushed enough about this to everyone already, here’s my thoughts on last night’s show by AIR and Kate Havnevik at the Kool Haus in Toronto, ripped from my last.fm profile:

I’ll admit I had some reservations going in to this; I’ve always just had AIR‘s music playing while I’m doing something else to help me chill out a bit. That didn’t exactly come to mind as the best kind of live performance, but thankfully I was wrong!

Kate Havnevik opened up with six tracks from her debut album, and because I’d never heard of her when I bought tix to see AIR originally, I listened to her stuff a little while before the show and was really impressed! She’s just as good live, if not better. I love the wide variety of instruments she puts into each set. New Day was chilling in many ways, and Kaleidoscope was great too, but I really loved the whole performance.

AIR seemed to bring a whole different crowd along, and after the first few songs people *really* started getting into it. Heard lots of languages I couldn’t specifically identify, but sounded Eastern European, so I’m assuming these guys are AIR’s hardcore fans, they sure jumped around like it Didn’t quite expect that I guess. Sexy Boy and La Femme d’argent sounded great, as did Once Upon A Time.

I had fun with their stuff, but somehow it felt almost too refined, too well done. They didn’t seem to really get into the music at all with the exception of a few songs. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the show, but Kate seemed to put more passion into her music than AIR did.

I never used to be big on live shows, but I’m hoping to change that this summer. With any luck, I hope to be able to catch LCD Soundsystem and Feist still this month.