Twin Peaks, following a killer Pitchfork Fest showing, metric tons of hype for their newest album Wild Onion, and by far the static-y-est Good Mark, Bad Marc participants ever, roamed into the praries of Allston and slaughtered the buffalo that was the Great Scott crowd. God, I miss Oregon Trail.

See, my love of their first album, Sunken, is very well documented on this site. But when the slickly-produced singles from Wild Onion began to drip over on Stereogum, Spin and the like, I was pretty apprehensive. I had just seen The Orwells — who unfortunately have to be mentioned every time we discuss Twin Peaks, even though I wish that wasn’t the case — drop the worst album they’ve done so far, the over-produced slogfest that calls itself Disgraceland. With the very, very different “I Found A New Way” and “Flavor” releasing early, I was scared that the rest of Wild Onion would follow suit, or even worse, diminish Peaks’ live sound.

Well, the following is a text I sent to a friend roughly two songs into their Tuesday set.

This one set made me rethink the entirety of Wild Onion and buy into what these guys are trying to do. The secret of Sunken being so good besides a shit-ton of tasty reverb and having the perfect length was the seriously good songwriting underneath. At times, the two were indistinguishable. With Wild Onion, they’re taking more risks and allowing their voices/guitars/drums/whatever to expand beyond the safety mask of reverb and shine through. And, while initially unsettling for someone who loved the wildness of Sunken so much, I have to say that after a few listens, it definitely works.

But like the text above, the show did what the album could not, and turned the slowed-down, better-produced Wild Onion songs and made them just as fun to jam out to as anything on Sunken. Live, “Strawberry Smoothie” becomes a swaggering, booming second song that makes you shake your head side-to-side like that sprinkler in your neighbor’s lawn that seems to have a personal vendetta against you. “Fade Away,” one of the few tracks on Wild Onion that resembled Sunken on my first listen, is even better in person. On record, it’s nuts. Live, it’s fucking blistering shit. Oh, man. What. “Flavor” became the sing-along that it was meant to be, and what I’m pretty sure was “Telephone” is actually danceable. Everything not only was so much better, but it made me appreciate the record like I should have originally.

Seriously, whichever member of Twin Peaks’ terrifyingly expanding fanbase is responsible for their recent level of polish, please direct them to me so I can get some inspiration into these dishes I’m washing.

This Kamikaze of a set came after two entertaining opening acts: the angry Japandroids-esque blistering of Miami Doritos, and The Lemons, who have to be in the running for funniest band of the year. These guys and gals played fun-in-the-sun beach tunes until even they made fun of themselves with three separate renditions of a song about ice cream trucks. Though the band could stand to lose a few members for the sake of stage space, group vocals and a don’t-give-a-fuck happy presence made it great theater. Looking forward to another hug from them again.

But it’s telling that when Peaks acquiesed and played “Stand in the Sand” and the place went nuts, that I truly realized how far this band has come. It was the best they’ve ever played anything, ever, and it was gratifying as shit. Long live Team Peaks. And fuck journalistic impartiality. That shit sometimes ain’t fun.