Friday night’s show at Otto’s was good enough to keep this admitted smoker inside for most of the night.

Baby Teeth opened the show. While I wasn’t too partial to their music, they did everything else pretty well. They tried to win over the apathetic early crowd with their dance moves and strange vocal harmonies. However, they didn’t quite make it, and the showgoers just kind of stood awkwardly by the stage.

Old Canes played next and took me by surprise. Old Canes has a number of collaborators, but only three played at Otto’s. They were awesome throughout their set and played a bunch of enjoyable tunes. Although they haven’t put out an album since 2004, “Early Morning Hymns” is pretty good, if I say so myself.

Old Canes has been compared to Neutral Milk Hotel, though they sounded more like Uncle Tupelo.

The next band to play was Kid, You’ll Move Mountains. I’m familiar with their other or former bands (Inspector Owl and Troubled Hubble), but they have something interesting here. Mountains is like Minus the Bear, but with higher energy. They played a handful of fun songs and got the crowd into it, which was a nice change of pace from the prior set, which was more laid back. This is definitely a band to see live, as they looked comfortable with each other.

Finally, after a long sound check, Murder By Death started their set with “Devil in Mexico,” one of their best. They ripped through their songs with careless abandon, as front man Adam Turla sang all the songs most of the crowd wanted. There were even some new selections (MBD goes into the studio in Nashville today) that proved downright awesome. The upcoming album is going to be a contender for best of 2008 for sure. Highlights of the set were: Sarah Balliet playing her cello with a guitar pick during “Brother,” the song “Those Who Stayed,” and the encore, which featured “Killbot 2000.”

Murder By Death plays in DeKalb frequently, so go see them. It doesn’t get any better.