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A Tuesday night in a tiny bar on the edge of a nature reserve in Orange County, California on one of the few nights in recent OC memory when the heavens opened up for some torrential downpouring... not the recipe for a successful or well-attended concert. But the redeeming power of small club gigs is never to be underestimated. It's intimate, it's fun, and you desperately want the band to win. Especially when the band is Sweden's Little Dragon. And LD brought the best out of 200 or so OC happy punters.

A great opening act (someone tell me who they were!!) set the stage for Yukimi Nagano and co... and co is definitely worth mentioning because this is a band affair:
håkan wirenstrand on keyboards is reminiscent of neil barnes best leftfield days (can't give a dude much more kudos than that -- oh and he does some half-hearted backing vocals too).
fredrik wallin on bass should have jacked up the sound more... hard to believe he's white especially given the dancing moves/grooves he pulled off at the end of the night.
erik bodin has got a mean falsetto and happily (for all of us) splices a drumpad into his kit line up. the encore saw him showcase skills but he was stellar throughout -- really carries the band at times which is saying a lot given his awesome caliber of bandmates he's keeping -- LD escalate their live set through a smart use of percussion and erik pulls it off with aplomb.

OK -- I'm writing a review but i hate analyzing great gigs. This one was just all fun -- the kind of fun you have when you see a perfect and lovely band who you know will get their commercial deserves one day and who you are just glad you've seen them in a small setting and cheered them on to a 3-song encore that should have went on for hours.

The next time LD come to Cali let's:
a) make sure LA promoters don't lock them up in the El Rey for one night and banish them for 90 days minimum for a 100 mile radius
b) keep them for many nights in a small and lovely venue like Detroit Bar
c) go to the show with all our friends