Lord Huron (courtesy KEXP)
Lord Huron: what a fun group of photogenic men; I adored this band. I had heard some of their stuff from Noisetrade, an online music sampling site and wanted to make sure I caught this act, but had no idea how much I would enjoy them. They were all such characters, as you will see by their gallery posting later this week. It just added a great dynamic to their music. The lead singer, Ben Schneider, had a gradual build in energy from singing and playing the guitar with a nice little fedora on his head to removing the guitar and the hat, as he pounded away on a drum. Not just on the drum… he was pounding ALL OVER the drum, and throwing himself forward and backward and jumping up and doing the air guitar! What a classic moment, to see lead singer who plays guitar put it down to play air guitar. Ha! As I was leaving the pit after another show, their pick up percussion player in the poncho was standing there talking with a friend, and when I asked to take a picture of him he made me wait until he could get his chewing stick in his mouth for a good pose.
tUnE-yArDs, what an amazing experience. After the first song, front lady, Merril Garbus, addressed the crowd by asking them—I should say yelling at them: “do you wanna live, Sasquatch?!” “Yeah!!” “Say, ‘I wanna live!’” and led them into a unified mass yelling “I wanna live! I wanna live! I wanna live!!!” while they began their second song. It was like yodeling on drugs – all over the place but every note had such precision and clarity. Each note really carried it’s individuality to create something spectacular when they worked together, and they worked together so well! So I suppose an easy way to put it would be… a tUnE-yArDs song is a great metaphor for how we should all live our lives in this world.
I can’t tell you how many times I heard “I can’t wait for St. Vincent. That’s who I’m here for today.”, “She’s my favorite.”, “She’s so amazing.”, “I love her.”, “I’m so excited.”, “blah blah blah.” In other words, St. Vincent was the talk of the grounds. She came out on stage, hair unkempt (but ironically in a put together kind of way) looking like a confident queen on stage. She was beautifully stoic and gradually evolved into a much rowdier and rebellious looking princess. During the last song, she jumped up into the crowd and rode the wave! She was being tossed around by the hands and (I’m sure) heads of many, back and forth, all while belting out the song, kicking her legs up and around and rapidly punching the air. Someone had to have gotten injured due to her crazy flailing hands and feet, but it was incredibly entertaining watching her do somersaults and disappearing into the crowd only to be lifted back up and thrown around again. I remember thinking, “man, if I did that, I would be so broken. But then again, that is why she is a rock star.”
