Pitchfork

The Crocodile Café, a Seattle venue with well-peppered Bloody Marys and light fixtures shaped like honeybee hives, was relatively empty, despite a solid triple bill. My Brightest Diamond, aka the classically trained Sufjan collaborator Shara Worden, was all clangy and quick, asking us to dance in a way that didn't quite work. The Nina Simone cover, however, was hands-down lovely. Drunk dude at my elbow agreed. "I coulda seen fucking Neil Young in Frisco tonight," he said. "This is better."

Next, Chad VanGaalen took center stage. "I have an ear infection, so I'm basically a baby trapped inside a bubble machine," he apologized. He seemed frustrated by broken strings and a still-jelling band, but perfection is for those at home with their vinyl. Sometimes, you need spontaneity, as when VanGaalen swapped the pronouns in "Clinically Dead". On Infiniheart, the song is about a man. At the show, though, it was about a lady.

Roundabout 12:30-- and after drummer Doug McGregor spent 10 minutes nuts-and-boltsing his kit (four extra drumsticks, in case a flip fails)-- the Constantines thanked "Ali for the bar-b-que" and began. Sans written set list, the quintet culled tracks from all three of its full-length albums, including a solid chunk from Tournament of Hearts (VanGaalen provided shoo-wop vox on "Soon Enough") and a fuzzed version of Shine a Light's "Young Lions". "Arizona", a song that sounds like Studs Terkel living on E Street, brought sweat to the set. During one of the song's aural holes (more pregnant pause than Swiss cheese), drunk dude moved to the front and flashed a silent devil horns. Fucking Neil Young, indeed.

The Cons can be theatrical, but they almost always stopped short of mindless plate-spinning. Most of the time, they were as excited as we were. Keyboardist Will Kidman knelt on the floor, clapping hands and thighs like an excited four-year-old, and McGregor's eyes popped large enough to grab like ping-pong balls from a lottery fishbowl. Singer/guitarist Steve Lambke often gestured Celine Dion-stylee, but he wasn't wearing a Heart of the Ocean, so who the hell cared if he chest-thumped once or twice? Ultimately, what mattered was steez backed by guts, and one needed only Webb's one-two punch of sweatstained guitarstrap (looked like macramé) and husky chutzpah to see that the Cons live were love, not fetish.