Last night Jeremy Enigk celebrated the release of his new album, OK Bear, with a packed crowd and a small orchestra at Neumos. As he stood center stage, a half-moon of French horns, a clarinet, a cello, an upright bass, and a whole slew of violins surrounded him.

It was the most perfect scenario in which to experience Enigk—the majesty of many of his songs is in the lush orchestration. But Neumos was not the perfect venue to host it; the sound didn't ruin the show, but it was distracting. Many of the instruments could hardly be heard over Enigk's guitar and vocals—and even those seemed weirdly quiet at times. For the first few songs, there was a small amount of feedback or weird buzzing on some of the lower notes. And the extra instruments, especially the two horns and violins, didn't carry out to the crowd at all, depsite the fact they were mic'd. Neumos is a rock venue, not a symphony hall. It's not built for shows like this.

Still, Enigk (and the Seattle Rock Orchestra, as he dubbed them at the start of the evening), put on a fine show. He switched back and forth between piano and acoustic guitar, while playing songs off the new record as well as some gems from World Waits and Return of the Frog Queen (including ("River to Sea," a guitar version of the gorgeous "Cannons," "Lewis Hollow," "Abegail Anne," and "Carnival").

After not quite an hour, he closed the show with "Shade and the Black Hat," one of my all-time favorite Enigk songs. It should've been louder, it should've been more overwhelming, but he did his best and at the end—as the strings finally got a little louder, he pounded on the piano like a mad man for 30 seconds or more... building and building, pounding and pounding on every key and... stop. It was the best 30 seconds of the show.

When he came back for an encore, before playing the last song of the night ("Explain," it was beautiful), a woman in the crowd yelled out "Television!" He sang one line from the Sunny Day Real Estate song and shook his head and laughed. "Maybe someday with a full band," he said. "I'm not saying anything... but I've heard rumors."

Everyone in the crowd cheered and he just grinned, knowingly. Sunny Day Real Estate is totally going to play again.