All My Silver Dreams

Be still, my heart, what an evening.

I got the ball rolling when I met a friend at The Roosevelt for their new early bird menu I'd been hearing so much about.

We took seats at the bar, the only two free when I arrived, affirming how popular the idea of cheap eats done right is.

With a glass of Gabrielle Rause Vin de Gris in hand, I listened as my friend told me all the fascinating stuff she'd recently learned about historical botany.

Now I know if I see elephant's ear growing in a yard, it was probably originally an African-American home.

Same with certain varieties of rose. Who knew?

Looking at the early menu, I forced myself to look beyond the fried oyster sliders and ordered a crabcake sandwich with slaw and spicy mayo while Friend kept it lighter with a salad of watermelon, roasted beets, avocado and Feta over Green Goddess dressing.

Tasty as her salad looked (and I probably will order it next time I'm in), my big fried crabcake sandwich oozing with slaw was just the ticket to kick off a night of pure pleasure.

And at the early bird price, I've no doubt I'll be back to experience more of that special menu.

Over restaurant gossip, hearing about her remodeling plans and a discussion of what poor communicators men can be, we wiled away the better part of two hours.

As the sun got slightly lower in the Church Hill sky, I finished up with a slice of coconut cake, a cake near and dear to my heart, as anyone who has ever been smitten with me can attest.

Then it was down the hill and back up again to the National.

Earlier, I'd gotten an invitation to go see Bio Ritmo tonight, but I'd declined, saying, "I'll be with Local Natives...in heaven."

Three and a half months after I'd bought a ticket for this show, it was finally happening.

Good thing I'd finally learned patience.

What I couldn't understand was that it hadn't sold out in advance, since Local Natives had sold out not one but two nights back in early April at the 9:30 Club.

I made sure to arrive in time for openers Ex Cops, a five piece with a male and female singer and lots of jangly guitar.

My only complaint with their sunny hook-driven pop was how songs seemed to abruptly end rather than be finished off.

Singer Amalie wandered offstage early on, returning to explain, "I broke my tambourine into 4,000 pieces the other night so I got another one from someone in the audience but now I've lost that. I'm going to use Natives' tambourine but I won't lose it."

And she didn't.

Just as their set of dream pop was ending, there was a huge influx of people to the venue, making me think maybe the show had finally sold out at the eleventh hour.

During the break I stayed put in front of the sound booth so as not to lose my prime position, leaving me free to eavesdrop on those around me.

"I don't want to go talk to those girls. I don't like girls who don't like other girls," a girl said to her boyfriend.

"I don't know what they were 'cause I only heard their last song. It was kind of dark and scary," a girl explained to a newcomer.

Clearly she had heard what I'd just heard through a completely different prism because I had heard neither dark nor scary, just happy indie pop.

Finally the lights were dimmed and, inexplicably, Bowie's "Young Americans" blasted from the sound system.

Even odder, the people around me sang along, many of them singing "young America," but who am I to correct them?

Local Natives took the stage and began their set with the first song off of their new album "Hummingbird," a record I obsessively listened to for the first two months I had it.

That wasn't going to thrill a girl I'd overheard earlier who'd asked her friend if she'd heard "Hummingbird" yet.

"No, I only like their first one, "Gorilla Manor" so I didn't really try to listen much to the new one before I came tonight."

Your loss, honey.

I'd been introduced to it by a music-lover who told me back in February that it was the best album of 2013 so far and I agreed after the first listen.

Tonight's sixteen-song set took nine songs from "Hummingbird," six from "Gorilla Manor" and one, "Warning Sign" from the Talking Heads.

Like I'd predicted, I was in heaven.

The way-too-brief "Ceilings," a song another music lover had told me he couldn't get past on the album because of its gorgeous chords and harmonies, took my breath away live.

Walk around till 3 a.m.
Tell me what I know again
To keep myself from second guessing

All my silver dreams bring me to you

Hold the summer in your hands
Till the summer turns to sand
We were staring at our ceilings

Thinking of what we'd give
To have one more say of sun
One day of sun

Tonight was the band's last night in the U.S. for a while and they said they were happy being sent off from Richmond.

"It's beautiful here," guitarist Ryan said. "I've spent some time with the Ken Burns Civil War series and here it is. We're from California where an old building is, like, 1920."

Next was "Shapeshifter," another from their first album, which inevitably got a part of the crowd worked up every time they dipped back that far.

All the songs feature upbeat guitars, exquisite three-part harmonies and the tastiest of drumming, so while I'd have been fine with them playing "Hummingbird" start to finish, everything else was gravy.

Fact is, their music makes me (and everyone else I saw) want to alternately swoon and dance and if that's not a feat, I don't know what is.

"I see a group of people down there singing every word," observed keyboardist and singer Kelcey. "It's so cool to hear you singing songs we wrote in our bedrooms."

For me, it was so cool to hear live songs that I've been playing endlessly on repeat for months.

After closing with the aching "Bowery," they came back for a three-song encore and with every note, I dreaded the end of it all.

"Sun Hands" was the final song, an appropriate one for its tribal feel and the crowd did their part, singing along at the top of their lungs.

It was such an incredible ending and since I was at the show alone, when the lights came up, I had no one to whom I could express my excitement about what I'd just experienced.

I turned around to the sound guy directly behind me and smiled what surely must have been a shit-eating grin for how satisfied I was with my night.

His face broke out in the widest of smiles and without missing a beat, he reached down and handed me the band's set list for the night.

Heaven, I'm in heaven...