Angus Stone in Berlin

Speaking of concerts, I never wrote about seeing Angus Stone in Berlin a couple months back.

You may (or may not) know him from the Australian brother–sister duo, Angus and Julia Stone. I only know them because my friend Lisa tipped me off to their music, but they've quickly become favorites. I really recommend them.

Anyway, Lisa, who's a big fan of theirs, was visiting me in Berlin a couple of months ago. The first night she arrived, she was on her laptop, looking around to see what events she might want to check out while she was here, when suddenly she looked up at me with big eyes and said: "Angus Stone is playing tomorrow night."

The concert was sold out (when I told another friend we were still going to go there and try to find tickets, he replied with skepticism, "Maybe you can find that most elusive of species, the sensitive neo-folk scalper") and I had to work until just before it started, but Lisa went early and stood outside and asked every single person if they had an extra ticket, and actually managed to get us two.

You know how it is with duos; even though the sum is indubitably more than the parts, a result of two people combining the best of their individual talents into something even larger and better, still as a listener you end up favoring the songs of one over the other.

For me, it's actually Julia Stone's songs (deceptively simple, haunting melodies) but for Lisa, it's definitely Angus' songs. And we got there early enough that we were right up front, so she was thrilled.

Angus Stone was quite sweet, peering shyly out at the audience from behind artfully mussed locks of hair (which must be a conscious fashion choice, because I don't think it's even possible to make hair that messy accidentally) and saying disarming things like, "Usually I have my big sister here to talk to you."

He played mostly songs off his new album ("The Wolf and the Butler" was the standout for me) but also extraordinary renditions of classics of his like "Big Jet Plane" and "Draw Your Swords."

Favorite exchange during the concert:

Angus Stone, after the audience has been singing along: "You guys sing pretty good."
Someone in the audience: "You too!"
Angus, sweetly: "Thanks."

Also, right behind me and Lisa were two young Dutch hippies (we first interacted with them because the girl of the two found the label on my beer bottle really pretty, and asked if she could keep it when I was done) who ended up at the concert – how am I not surprised that this is how two wandering hippies would end up at the concert of a traveling hippie band? – because they'd been at a rest stop somewhere, hitchhiking toward Berlin, and ended up talking to the band, who were also stopped there, and who invited them to the concert and put them on the guest list.

Here's "The Wolf and the Butler," from the Berlin concert, a sweet lament to not leaving the important things in life until too late: