One of the best places to see a band in Chicago is at Schuba's. With a capacity of about 200 or so, there is a nice intimacy to the setting. The room has decent acoustics, a bar in back, and I have always found the crowd there to be polite. And they waste no space; the band actually enters the room via a door leading onto the street; exiting their tour van/bus, taking three strides over the sidewalk, through the door, up 4 steps and gathering around their respective instruments. Any more low key and it would be a friend's basement.
We (J & K, George, Mike S) staked out a spot near the back, which is to say about 30 feet from the stage. It was the early show, so the opener was Talkdemonic, a 2-piece from Portland whipping off tight little tunes devoid of lyrics but heavy on drums, synthesizers, and electric violin. They were decent; though I didn't pick up the CD it would probably make good background music after a long day.
After a ten minute break the six guys calling themselves The National ambled up on stage. Lead singer Matt Berninger is a commanding presence on stage, alternately surrounding his lanky frame with a halo of smoke and then straining himself to full height, tilting his neck back and singing up into the rafters as if the devils he were conjuring via his tortured musical protagonists had somehow slipped upwards on their way down to hell. They played a good mix of material from their albums, probably a breakdown of 20/30/50% from their first to most recent. Requests for the piano-driven "Karen" led to Berninger quipping that he "had to forget how to play the piano for Karen". They finished up with the song that drew me to the band a couple years ago, "Available", off of Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. Catch them while they are still playing the small venues; maybe they'll never get popular enough for the bigger places but they deserve to.
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