John Vanderslice lets his fans get up on stage and sing with him. That’s how much fun he is. More about that later. Now for the review. The lineup for the evening was Chris Mills, St. Vincent, and John Vanderslice at The Mercury Lounge and it was possibly the best $12 I have ever spent. What a f-ing amazing show and I’m not a big cusser so that means something…something awesome.

The show kicked off with the weak link in the lineup: Chris Mills. He was kind of a dramatic 80s pop/rock singer/songwriter/guitarist and he played with a piano player and so it kinda reminded me of The Boomtown Rats, though just not as memorable. If you had a tape of theirs in your car and you knew all the words, you would sing a long and have a good time, but that’s about it. He was good, but when St. Vincent came on, I completely forgot about him.

By the way, St. Vincent (Annie Clark of Polyphonic Spree fame) is my new obsession. I can’t remember the last time I fell so hard for a musician that I had never even heard of before. She sings, plays guitar, bass, piano, synth, and does all this cool programming stuff. She’s charming and delightful and a seriously skilled and interesting guitarist. She was like…I don’t even want to insult her by comparing her to other female singer/songwriter types. Do yourself a favor and check out her myspace page or better yet see her live cause I don’t think she’ll be playing tiny venues for much longer. Look for her album coming out soon on Beggars Banquet.

Anyway, as I was saying, John Vanderslice lets his fans get up on stage and sing his songs karaoke style while he plays along. Seriously. If you go to his website, you can email him and tell him what song you want to sing or play bass with and he picks one person from each show to come up and do just that. Tonight’s lucky guy was Kevin and I was so jealous! Later in the show, he brought up five audience members to sing backup on “me and my 424″. He was the funnest and so down to earth and he really wants to be friends with his fans and include them in the show. He took requests, he charmed the audience, he gave away a Seiko watch! The audience loved him and he loved us and he didn’t want to leave; so he just kept coming up with more songs to play. Surprise guest Erik Freilander even made an appearance on a couple of tunes and he brought back Annie Clark for the finale. And that’s not all!! At the end of the night John announced that they would be sticking around for a dance party! Yay! He’s doing a show at Union Hall in Brooklyn on Sunday and I already have my ticket. If you can’t make that show, he’ll be at the Mercury Lounge again in September. Please for the love of all things musical do not miss this show. I love music so f-ing much (there I go again with the cussing) and this night reminded me why and I would tell John Vanderslice that right now if I could, but he’s probably out having breakfast with his fans.