Women: Thievery Corporation is what you need to play if your boyfriend has sex with, shall we say, not as much graceful aplomb as you’d like.

Men: Thievery Corporation is what you should use as a soundtrack when you very quietly sell everything you own, drain your bank account, and are finally kicking off that snake and opium den start-up you’ve always wanted.

The crowed at the TC show at the NorVa last night showed up styling a little lit. For no reason I went through the effort of discerning it smelled like a fresh Cinnabon throughout the crowd area. Which made some sense. TC’s music is for the kind of people who might consider themselves sweet, but who like to get a little gooey.

The show started with streams of cobalt blue washing over the audience. The swaying grind began en masse. The DJ entered, his fedora glowing as if lit by the moons of Jupiter. He pumped a triumphant fist twice in the air. Cue the bass player.

In the blue lights the bass player’s long hair cast the silhouette of thick, bouncing head tentacles. He grooved, back lit by the DJ stand. The crowd felt it without irony or the standing still, too-coolness so common at concerts these days. People came, it seemed, to dance, to get lost in the music, to climb inside TC’s world rhythms and ice skate in penny loafers, to chase rainbow sparrows always teasingly out of reach.

Cue the sitar player, Rob Meyers. He wore sunglasses and a faux-revolutionary hat. He sat on a speaker set casually, leaned back the way a kid sits when tying their shoes. In a sort of musical alchemy his Indian-inspired chords fused seamlessly with the DJ’s beat to create something more powerful, something greater.

Welcome the first female singer of the night. One hand coquettishly in her leather skirt, the other gripping the mic. No bra, dancing in a way that proved she knows the real reason God gave women hips. She owned the stage in a way that made everyone in the audience wish she would own them on a velvet couch after the show.

Cue the Rasta woman for TC’s biggest hit to date, “Lebanese Blonde.” A quick scream of recognition from the crowd then back to dancing. Half a dozen mini-spotlights swiveled at the back of the stage like six steam white eyes searching, searching, searching. And the two friends in the middle of the crowd took off their shirts, broke open the glowsticks, and started dancing like atoms breaking apart.
**

Thievery Corporation is actually just two people, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, but they brought with them a musical gang on stage. Along with the bass, DJ, sitar and slew of singers were a drum set, a sax, a horn, and a bongo set. Even if you think you don’t know TC’s music, you do. Their music was featured in Memento, The West Wing, Vanilla Sky, The Sopranos, True Blood, and Garden State. In one incarnation it is background music, perfect for filling in the gaps in conversation at a club. But not last night. Not live.

Out came the Brazilian temptress with the model thin legs and Lolita-short skirt. She strutted and kicked her knee length boots as well as she sang. When she made her way into the crowd later in the show you could almost see her with your eyes closed, just feeling the heat on your eyelids.

A new female singer came out for each of the first four songs. It’s like the girls made a bet before the show for who could most gamely conjure the spirit of Venus. Forget black-outs and Valentine’s Day, somebody should check the maternity ward records  for nine months after TC comes to town, see if there’s a spike in births pattern.

“We don’t smoke nor drink nor fuck!” called someone from the stage, all lies.

It was one of those moments when I’m sort of glad that, for an area as big as ours, there’s such a luke-warm support for the arts. We’re big enough that cool acts like TC come to town, but we’re lame enough that the NorVa is rarely super crowded, leaving plenty of room to dance and move, and otherwise express how you’re feeling the music.

It wasn’t clear if the band loved playing with each other. But they most certainly loved being on stage playing themselves. The gestalt was one of the stronger live concerts I’ve seen in the past few years, even if TC is not the kind of music I usually listen to. I’d be okay never hearing them again, but at the same time I’d be stoked if they made the playlist for every party I went to the next five years, if that makes any sense.

Long live good live music that makes you break a sweat. It’s as close as we’ve come so far to an anecdote to the Styrofoam milkshake we call everyday life, so God bless it. God bless it to hell.