Call me picky, but if I’m going to be a fan of a band, I tend to make it a general requirement that they be at least as good in a live performance as they are on their album(s). Granted, there’s some flexibility built in to such a policy — obviously, in a live performance, the occasional missed note can’t be smoothed over with auto-tuning, and guitar riffs can’t be redone if a off chord is played here and there. Human beings being imperfect, it’s understood that one will occasionally hear such missteps in a live performance.

But given that understanding, there’s still an expectation that the band will perform to a certain level. And Flyleaf delivered handily in that regard.

I’ve been to only a few concerts in my life: Matthew Good (twice, once when he was still touring with the Matthew Good Band and once when he had gone solo), The Tragically Hip (twice), LiVE, Rebecca St. James, the Newsboys, the Dixie Chicks, and now Flyleaf. And in general, I’ve been lucky…most of the groups listed above did pretty well in concert, with one notable exception.

Of all the concerts listed above, two were held at Telus Field (the baseball stadium in Edmonton), and both times the band I went there to see hailed from Texas. The Dixie Chicks hail, I believe, from Lubbock, whereas Flyleaf hails from Belton. But the difference in quality between the concerts was pretty striking.

When I saw the Dixie Chicks perform, the band itself did well; the music behind the vocals was excellent. But Natalie Maines was having an off day, I guess…she was often off-key (and compensated by singing louder when she was — ugh!), often off the beat, and just generally failed to impress. Which is a pity, because the rest of the band (as noted) turned in a fine performance. That was the one concert I’ve been to which didn’t impress, and did quite a lot of damage to my appreciation of the Dixie Chicks as a musical act, especially because most of their songs don’t exactly feature challenging tonal progressions.

Conversely, Flyleaf turned in an all-around great show. What few off-key notes Lacey Mosley sang weren’t nearly as offensive as Maines’ missteps, in no small part because Flyleaf’s songs tend to feature somewhat more complex tonal progressions, not to mention a fair bit of minor key work. And their cover of How He Loves has basically ruined all other versions of that song for me, for how much power and drive they added to it. And of course, the band was just on fire; Sameer Bhattacharya’s guitar work was particularly impressive.

Also, their closing piece — a cover of How He Loves Us — has forever ruined other, slower and/or more acoustic renditions of that song for me.