Hot off the release of a new album, I Just Drew This Knife, Spencer Krug returned to Vancouver alongside the album’s contributors, Eli Browning and Jordan Koop, for a rainy Wednesday evening show at the Fox Cabaret.

Opening the night was Krug's long-time friend, collaborator, and sometimes-bandmate, Carey Mercer, doing a solo set. Mercer started with a land acknowledgement -- and also acknowledging just everything going on in the world right now -- before delving into “Sound Travels From the Snow to the Dark”. From there he went through a selection of Frog Eyes songs, from the chaotic “Rainbow Stew” off the latest album The Bees, to “Bushels” from Tears of the Valedictorian, his distinctive voice filling the room.
Mercer also teased a few new songs, one which didn’t even have a name yet, as the growing crowd was rapt. One of the more attentive groups I've seen for an opener in some time.

Shortly after, Spencer Krug hit the stage alongside Browning & Koop, and kicked off with “God Knows Why This Is Where I Love You” from I Just Drew This Knife. They played just about the entire new album throughout the show, including the opener “Cry All Day”, their self-proclaimed weirdest, “Taxi After Taxi”, and “Nostalgia Is The Rose”, one of my highlights from the new release. Krug also slipped in a couple other songs from his recent solo albums, like “Slipping In and Out of Thee Pool” and “How We Have to Live”.

Throughout the show, Krug chatted with the crowd, sincerely thanking everyone for coming, but also self-deprecatingly joking he wasn’t a ‘guitar guy’ and admitting that, since the tour had just kicked off, this was only the second time the trio had played together onstage. And you would barely have noticed the fact... had it not been for a bit of a technical malfunction. Partway through the set, there was a catastrophic failure with the drum loops on the laptop, causing the set to come to a halt. But Krug eventually proclaimed “We’ll just fuckin’ figure it out” as they went into “Fading Graffiti” to continue on. There were a couple more hiccups with the laptop as the set went on, but the trio didn’t let it phase them too much, going through a few more from the new album, capping off my other favourite from the release, the soaring “Something About The Real World”.

I’ve seen plenty of shows before where things go wrong, and there are usually two things that will stop things from spiralling into disaster: the band keeping their cool, and the audience being patient. Luckily, this show had both of those in spades, so it only ended up a hiccup in the show. Krug didn’t let his frustrations affect the rest of the set, and everyone in that room was just happy to hear him play.

setlist
God Knows Why This Is Where I Love You
Cry All Day
Orcas
Taxi After Taxi
For Fear That Songs Come True
Slipping In and Out of Thee Pool
My Muscles Are Fine
Fading Graffiti
River River
How We Have to Live
Nostalgia Is The Rose
Love Song
Something About The Real World