I live my life with low-grade anxiety, one I suspect I share with lots of music fans—those of us with more interest in music than time in the day to pursue it.  I’m anxious that there’s a band out there that I need to be listening to but am not.  One that would occupy a very special space in my life if only I’d heard it.  And unlike many of my other anxieties, this one has been validated.  How, for example, is it that Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s first album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, had been out for nearly two years before I’d even heard of the band?  (Hat tip to the good people at All Songs Considered for clueing me in, thereby further proving that I am, in fact, a demographic stereotype.)

Thao’s blend of percussive indie-pop with smart lyrics – coying at times, biting at others—buried into my head from the first listen and hasn’t left.  So it was with great excitement that I tore into the album that Thao put out with collaborator Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn earlier this year.  That self-titled album proved an exhilarating, if somewhat disjointed, affair.  (Read Kevin’s review here)

Having never seen either artist live, it was with even greater excitement that I headed to the Black Cat last Friday to check out their show.  From song one the duo came out swinging...