New Havenites Lyon Street Fire were mid-set when I arrived at Spaceland. Two guitars, bass, drums, male and female singers were a groove rock outfit. Both of the singers were good and shared the duties equally. The group reminded me of Rusted Root in that they have multiple singers on top of the jammy backdrop. Forgot to ask them if they were actually denizens of Lyon Street, a hip location near a community garden spot I tend.
Mikaela Davis is a young harpist from Rochester. The harp is quite a sight and I felt for the young lady as she wheeled it in on a hand truck and hoisted it on stage. The band were some young mop top jam types. Guitar, in-your-face bass, and drums laid down the song structure for Davis' harp, sometimes keys and vocals. Her recent recording Delivery was highlighted on this evening. The songs were good but sometimes suffered from the goofy banality of jam lyrics. The harp made the evening, sometimes being bent to sound Asian, other times offering a bluegrass twang. There was even one jam tune with an extended raga feel. Davis did a St Vincent cover which seemed apt. I cracked up when she said " Stravinsky once told me that harpists spend 80% of their time tuning and 20% of their time playing out of tune". She said that there is YouTube footage of her re-stringing the thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment