It’s no secret that The Royale is a weird place. It’s an even weirder place for shows (i.e. show starts at 6:30? and don’t even get me started on that mannequin behind the bar…). But on Friday and Saturday night, I’m sure no one paid attention to anything to do with The Royale, or was dumbfounded in the venue as I was. The lineup for the two-night run was two bands from the western states, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down from San Francisco, and The Head and the Heart hailing from Seattle.

A good amount of the audience showed up to see Thao and the Get Down Stay Down rock their set of music ranging from bluegrass to eclectic pop. Thao and the Get Down Stay Down have been making music for ten years under the leadership of Miss Thao Nguyen, but if you were like me and just knew a few random songs and an artist name, you would have missed out on that fact that Nguyen plays every genre imaginable and reinvents herself on every album. For example, she plays indie pop on 2008’s “Know Better Learn Faster” and mixes funk/electronica tracks and folksy melodic ones on “Thao and Mirah.” Playing mostly songs from their newest release, “We the Common,” Thao and the band worked seamlessly together to create a show that encases all the personalities of Thao by mixing instruments, melodies and harmonies to create not quite a dance party, but an awesome show of great musicians and expertly arranged songs. Closing the set with new single “We the Common,” and her sixth and final guitar change, Thao bopped around in a badass red jumpsuit while pumping up the crowd for the main event.

The Head and the Heart was not what I expected, but was exactly as I expected.

With two albums under their belt, the six-person ensemble booked two sold out nights at Royale and for good reason. They fucking killed it. The dreary weather of the Pacific Northwest draws some awful gloomy weather and music, but some incredible talent. While the albums can err on the downer side with their emotionally overloaded tunes such as cry-fest “Rivers and Roads,” the translation to stage was flawless. With six members, it’s really awesome to see variety in sounds and The Head and the Heart captures this with its vocals by using three different voices that perfectly complement each other. Plus I can’t remember the last time I saw a piano used on stage.

There are so many things that should be said for this band, but mostly it’s the band you want to be in. You want to be friends with the bearded bass player in the ski beanie, the aloof singer/guitar player with the mustache that everyone in dirty America is sporting this year, the only girl in the band that plays violin, guitar and can sing, sing sing! You even want to be in a band with the spokesperson and other vocalist/guitar player who comes off as… well a little dweebie, but IN A GOOD WAY! The thing that got me most besides this was that these guys play every song as if it’s their closing tune. I hate to use the age-old, dumb ass saying of “live like you’re dying” (or is that a country song?), but they really do! When the band’s songs span emotional and somber to more upbeat and groovy, their lyrics mimic this. Each song is so heartbreaking, but can be so poetically hopeful like “I just want to die with the one I love” and “the sun still rises even with the pain, … the sun still rises through the rain.”  Who hasn’t ever felt like “everybody feels a little crazy, but they go on living within?” I feel like an asshole using lyrics in a review, but for once it really was impossible to not notice the lyrics when they are so personal, so universal, and in this instance, shared in a room with strangers in a venue that tweets shit like this.