This was fun. Essentially, all I have to do is tell you how excellent it was to see all the members of the New Pornographers on stage at once rocking out. It was so freakin’ awesome that if I wrote a thesis on it, I still could barely impart unto you the awesomeness of the New P’s goin’ at it with a near-sublime, rainbow-coloured sign flashing “The New Pornographers” behind them.

I went with a friend who didn’t particularly like their latest album (a ridiculous blasphemy I will not bother delving into here), and although 80 per cent of the songs were from their new LP, he still had a great time. That is the magic of Carl Newman’s power-pop poster posse (hooray alliteration), who delivered exceptionally played live renditions of “Mass Romantic,” “Sing Me Spanish Techno” and “Letter from an Occupant,” among others. Also, seeing the rare sight of all the band’s members, including Neko Case and Dan Bejar, was enough to put me in a happy place for a week afterward.

The only downside to this concert (besides that it couldn’t last forever) was the opening acts. The first was Fancey, New P’s member Todd Fancey’s side project. Although their presentation and sound quality weren’t what you would expect of a band opening for a band as high profile as the New P’s, none of their songs were bad at all. In fact, it seemed that Fancey just weren’t polished enough to make their material sound very good live.

The real shocker was the second opening act, Lavender Diamond. The lead singer for the group came on stage and then proceeded to dedicate every song to some hippy-dippy inanimate object (seriously, she did one for trees, one for air and one for world peace). This wouldn’t have been terrible, but all the band members were so obviously drugged up on god knows what that their songs came across as just plain bad. But even Lavender Diamond’s awfulness couldn’t faze the overall bliss of this concert.