Animal Collective @ Le Bataclan

Gretchen and I caught Animal Collective on friday, our first concert in France.
Great show, not a lot of movement among the three band members but amazingly exciting none the less. I only commented once on how Sam Beam makes these guys look like old men(In reference to Gretchen's disparaging remarks at the Mars Volta show last year). I will say that it appeared that Panda Bear was participating in and probably winning an ugly sweater contest and the striped shirt dude either had a horrible haircut or had worn a hat for a week and taken it off right before coming on stage. I appoligize for talking about the band members but when you stand still for a couple of hours people are gonna notice these things. I think my point that headlamps are cool was reitterated by the dude with the beard.
Le Bataclan is a pretty cool venue, it reminded me of Metropolis in Montreal. It appears to be a converted theatre and had the biggest disco ball i've ever seen. The acoustics were really good from the two spots we listened from. The only venue problems was the single bar and the coat check staffed by one guy where we waited for an hour after the show.
Animal Collective opened the show with the album opener from Merriweather Post Pavilion, In the Flowers. They played all my favorites from the new album, My Girls(the closer), Bluish and Lion in a Coma. Gretchen was a little disappointed that they didn't play Peacebone but from all the dancing and hand clapping she was doing you wouldn't know it. The electronic heavy sound translated really well to a live setting, i didn't envy the roadies that have to plug in all the keyboards, pedals, effect and whatnot, they must have had a couple hundred miles of cable. The live situation was pretty interesting, a couple of times i thought that they reached a space that would really connect with jam band fans, it was pretty cool to hear them stretch out some of the songs.
High Life opened the show. High life was one American dude who sounded great. Do you remember that David Gray album a few yeas ago with that popular song? That album got a bit of attention because Gray used a tiny bit of elecronics. Imagie id Gray had really embraced electric drums and loops to the fullest, that woul be High Life. His voice sounded exactly like David Gray(That's a good thing) and his guitar playing was backed by some laptop wizardry that sounded really good.