So there is a place between North and South Carolina (it’s literally between both, I have no idea what state it is) where there are a bunch of shut down casinos. It’s probably one of the weirdest places I have ever been to. 
Pedro’s GPS took us on some random route up to Chapel Hill not on the highway, so I could not tell you where this place is. Inside of these abandoned casinos (there were about 6 of them as well as 3 closed down internet cafes) everything had been demolished so it looked pretty terrifying. Even stranger, beside one of the casino’s locked doors there was a code pad (like you see in movies) that was still working. I tried very hard to figure out the passcode but nothing would work. I’m pretty sure if I had unlocked it I would have found a super-secret FBI base. It would definitely be a good place to have one.
When we arrived in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, we parked outside of Cat’s Cradle where Jose Gonzalez was playing with his band Junip that night. We had about 3 hours until the Here We Go Magic show so we decided to go to Harris Teeter and buy ice cream since that was the most logical thing to do. They had a 2 for $5 deal so obviously we bought two tubs of ice cream. It was raining when we exited Harris Teeter so we ended up sitting on some plastic chairs outside of the grocery store eating ice cream with plastic spoons for about an hour. A lot of people walked by and I’m pretty sure all of them stared at us for extended amounts of time.
Before the concert, we gave the rest of our ice cream to a grateful homeless man and entered the venue. I had never been to Local 506 before and I now really like it. It’s fairly small, but it has an excellent sound system and a very nice manager. 
After a little wait, the opening band Caveman stepped onto the stage. It took them a couple songs to impress but once they got into it, they definitely took over that stage. The lead singer sounded a lot like Win Butler, the singer of Arcade Fire. The whole band definitely had an Arcade Fire sound to them. All the band had high energy, especially the bassist Jeff Berrell who was screaming a lot throughout the set and whose spirit animal is a lion.
In between the two bands, a girl who had seen Here We Go Magic was raving about their live show, and none of her claims were false. Every one of their 5 members brought an insane amount of talent to this show making every song something special. 
There were many highlights throughout the set including Hands In The Sky from their most recent EP (check out my review of that here) and Fangela from their debut self-titled album. If you haven’t heard these guys before I would highly reccommend everything they have ever released, as it is all really good.
A lot of the songs they did were extended with noisy, improvised jams at the end of them. We found out later that night from the band that they did these differently every night, playing off of each other. This is extremely interesting as it provides a different experience every night for both the band and fan. Speaking of the fans, Here We Go Magic had some committed fans, pretty much knowing every song and dancing/clapping with all of them. 
I don’t blame them, as lead singer Luke Temple’s (spirit animal = deer) killer falsetto is enough to sway anyone into loving them. The band were very high energy and talented most notably being barefooted bassist Jen Turner who was dancing and swinging her long hair all over the place for the whole show, and was also awesome at bass.
After the show I talked to the band and they were extremely friendly and interesting. Peter Hale, the drummer, told me that his spirit animal is a big, ugly horse named Moose. This is because he used to have a big, ugly horse named Moose. The keyboardist, Teeny Lieberson, is a turtle and guitarist Mike Bloch is a rhinoceros. I also talked about Glastonbury Festival with the band since they played there last year and I happened to stumble upon their set. They told me stories of that legendary festival in which Mike ended up sleeping in between two cars while Peter and Luke fell asleep on top of a hill. Supposedly Thom Yorke was right at the front of the crowd during their set which gave them something to play for since the crowd were a bunch of tired, drugged-up zombies at this point (it was 11am on the second day of the festival).
When we got back to our car, Jose Gonzalez’s show was also over and he was outside of his bus packing up, so we thought why not ask him his spirit animal! After explaining the question to him (he didn’t understand it at first), I found out that his spirit animal is a king cobra.
Please go and listen to Here We Go Magic and check them out whenever they pass through your town. They are playing in Pensacola, FL and New Orleans tomorrow. You can check out the rest of their tour dates on their official Facebook page. Also, the pictures were taken by Christian Barker who takes pictures for events and can be contacted at productions.barker@gmail.com.
