It’s tough being a Yeasayer fan in the District. First, their January show sells out the Black Cat Backstage, prompting shocked fans to start an online movement to get them to play upstairs, prompting shocked DCist staffers into asking just when the Black Cat started selling tickets ahead of time for Backstage shows (answer: about a year ago) and prompting shocked DCist readers into asking…just who is this band, anyway? However, the Brooklyn quartet promised a quick return to a larger stage, offering first dibs to those disgruntled fans who gave their email addresses to the band’s promoters, who found out about last night’s show a week in advance of the general public. So, the band made its triumphant return to a very full Black Cat Mainstage on the first night of their new tour with Baltimore art-rockers Ponytail.

Thus making the brevity of their set awfully surprising. With the understanding that they have only released one album, a set time that clocks in around the fifty minute mark during a show that’s essentially been put on to thank their fans for being so dedicated seemed slightly odd, especially when the loud outcries for an encore were met with the increasingly louder sound of Gang of Four’s Entertainment!. There was an air of puzzlement at the end of the show as the concertgoers wondered whether they felt like greedy children because of the excellence of the previous fifty minutes, or whether they had just been given the shaft.