I like to fall asleep to Grizzly Bear—imagining Ed Droste sitting in a rocking chair next to my bed, strumming his guitar and lulling me to sleep with his water-clear voice as a warm breeze blows in through the windows of my Southern plantation home. So when I saw they were playing the Palladium, I was excited to see how they’d make a live show out of bedtime music.

For the first half hour or so, they simply played their bedtime music loudly, which just confused my head. Especially since their set was a dreamy series of mason-jar lanterns hanging from telephone-pole setups that reminded me of the fireflies outside my fantasy plantation home. The audience swayed and “woo!”-ed song after song, but there weren’t a lot of arms pumping in the air or bodies jumping up and down. Not that there needs to be—it’s Grizzly Bear—but I like to be surprised at concerts.

Then, right in the middle of my yawn, they broke it out with a basstastic “Fine For Now” and the show was on. Grizzly Bear invited Victoria Legrand from opener Beach House out to sing the ooohs on “Two Weeks,” and then to sing lead on Grizzly Bear’s New Moon soundtrack contribution, “Slow Life.” This was followed by a spacier version of “Colorado,” which the stoned kids behind me repeatedly referred to as “fucking awesome.”  It’s hard to say whether the rest of the show was consistently exciting or if we were still rushing from that boost of energy in the middle, but either way, I wasn’t sleepy in the slightest when it ended.

—Amber Hollingsworth