Concert Review: The Miracle on Tremont Street (with Video)

December 5th, 2009 • Boston, Concert Review, Electronic, Rock

Usually when you are awakened three hours before the alarm goes off, it’s a sign that you might be having a bad day. However, when I received such a call one morning in October while on a trip in San Francisco, the opposite was true.

The call alerted me to the lineup of the annual Miracle on Tremont Street sponsored by Boston’s WFNX, which featured three of my favorite indie rock acts, in concert order, Passion Pit, Phoenix and Spoon, and the concert was to be held in Boston’s historic Orpheum Theater.

With some luck my friends and I were able to procure some tickets to this explosion of semi-independent musicians. After several months of anticipation, December 4 finally arrived and down to Boston we went.

PASSION PIT (♥♥♥)

We arrived just as local favorites Passion Pit were taking the stage. To be honest, I was expecting much more from the Cambridge natives. Their set seemed marred by the fact that they were out of practice in being an opening act. That being said, it was a good set and got the crowd warmed up for the night. Although the Orpheum is a seated venue, everyone in attendance was on their feet and trying as best they can to get a bit of dancing in, which was a bit complicated.

Their set took the basic form of their 2009 release Manners, and I kind of felt like they could have plugged in an iPod with their album and played it really loudly to get the same basic effect.

Here is a section of when they played their popular single “Sleepyhead”

PHOENIX (♥♥♥♥♥)

I have been fortunate to have seen many epic shows in my life, but Phoenix’s performance at The Miracle on Tremont Street was about as close to a perfect concert experience as I could possibly imagine. The French band began with the single of their most recent release Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, “Lisztomania” and followed it up with hit after hit from the breadth of their discography. The crowd was, in my opinion, there to see Phoenix and the mood was jubilant and celebratory. Every song built off of the momentum of the last and the interplay between performer and audience member was unparalleled. They closed with an absolutely epic version of “1901,” which bled into a pseudo-encore with an additional three or so minutes tacked on to what was already a really original reworking of the track.

If you can see Phoenix now, do it. You will not be disappointed. In the meantime, enjoy this video of them playing “Lasso” at the Miracle on Tremont Street

SPOON (♥♥♥♥)

At long last, Spoon took the stage and played a set that was decidedly different from the previous two bands. They opted to play a show that I thought was geared more towards their most devout fans than just the errant listener that thought Ga Ga Ga Ga was a fun album to listen to once or twice a month. Their set featured a lot of slow tempo deep album cuts, and the audience, who had been going wild for Phoenix only moments earlier was much more subdued, not really sure how to react to the music in front of them.

That being said, as a pretty big fan of Spoon when I was a Senior in high school, I thought their set was a good sampling of the variety of Spoons repertoire and a good concert over all. However, if I had been the concert’s promoter, I would have probably not even booked Spoon, it seemed extraneous and the juxtaposition between the sets of Passion Pit and Phoenix to that of Spoon was just too great.It was not until their last song of their encore, the ever-popular “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” that the audience really got into their set, which was unfortunate considering the quality of the performance overall.

Here is a section of “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb:”

-Doug Ray

Doug Ray is the co-host of Saltimbocca & Escargot, Sundays at 8-10 PM Eastern Time on WRBC.

Tags: Miracle on Tremont Street, Passion Pit, Phoenix, Spoon, WFNX

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