This was one of the best shows I saw last year, with the only problem being that I didn't actually see it.  Let me explain...

Despite arriving early, standing in line and waiting for the club to open, my friends and I still didn't manage to be the very first people to get in the door.  Not even close.  Once inside we quickly scanned the room for a few empty seats and got excited when we saw one last bench with nobody on it.  We snapped it up, thinking we'd done good.  It was then that we noticed the giant post standing between us and the stage.  Now I'm sure this post was serving some purpose - keeping the roof from falling on us or whatever - but it sure was a buzzkill.  At first with the stage and floor empty, we thought it might not be too big a deal.  But when Neko finally came out and stood - you guessed it - squarely behind the post, it became painfully obvious we had the worst seats in the house.  The view from the bathroom may have been slightly more obscured. 

So this one turned out to be a mostly audio, not-so-visual experience.  And that's a shame because we're not exactly talking about Burl Ives here.  Neko is pretty hot.  Disappointing as our view was, things would have been worse had I been a long-time fan of Neko's, which I wasn't.  I only have her latest album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and she played almost the whole thing.  That's easily one of my favorite albums of the last couple years, by the way.  The only other song that I recognized was an excellent cover of Dylan's Buckets of Rain.  She put a lovely twist on that one, complete with acoustic slide guitar and a steadier rhythm than the original.  The whole band sounded great and Neko and her backup singer didn't shy away from the challenging vocal parts.  Her opening act seemed like a talented musician in his own right.  I don't remember his name.

I only had my point and shoot camera with me and it was really dark so getting good photos was tough.  Not that I could see anything, anyway...