He was only thirteen months late, but Jonathan Coulton finally made it to Toronto last night, settling in at the Lula Lounge with Paul and Storm for a marvelous evening of geek rock.
Oh, it was lovely. Three solid hours of songs about zombies, giant squids, mad scientists, pure math, pirates, computer programming, parenthood, IKEA and that thing Randy Newman does where he takes a movie and boils it down to an obvious, insipid title song.
And then, just as our bodies were spent from the 37th collective nerdgasm — a reference to spaghetti-os! A LOLcats joke! — they went and busted out a beautiful, almost spiritual cover of They Might Be Giants’ “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, rolling the song back to its origins as a lullaby and making me tear up for the first time since … well, since I saw the Johns blast through their own exuberant cover of Cub’s “New York City” this time last year. It’s a personal thing.
Kate — who had to be cajoled into accompanying me to the show, but who I’m pretty sure ended up having a very fine time — pointed out that if we’d seen this exact same show in Brooklyn, They Might Be Giants would have emerged from the audience to do back-up vocals, or something. I’m not sure I could have handled that, to be honest.
Incidentally, if you’re not familiar with either Coulton or Paul and Storm … well, shame! Shame on you! Whose life could not be brightened by a song about monkeys or pirates?
The zombie song, that’s just a given.
Hey! Found this post through a mutual friend – I was also at this show. Great review! I can’t wait to go home and listen to my brand new Coulton CDs, for which I’ve had the mp3 of for years 🙂
We’ve waited something like three years to see Paul and Storm again, after seeing them open for The Arrogant Worms at Hugh’s Room. Of course they ended up coming when we already had a trip booked to be on the other side of the country!