Photos by Philip Cosores
It’s kind of strange going to see a couple of folk acts in a space like The Echo. The room is everything you’d want in rock’n’roll venue; dark, grimy, and loud, which is not exactly what you want when you’re going to see bright, clean, and relaxed music. The challenge for the acts then becomes to use their music to make the audience forget their surroundings and transport them somewhere else. On this occasion Breathe Owl Breathe and Laura Gibson both gave it their best shot, to varying levels of success.
Within the opening songs of Breathe Owl Breathe’s set, it was evident that singer Micah Middaugh was a talented story teller through music. By behaving just a little weird while singing his songs, and acting out certain lyrics, then with the additional dramatic vocals from Andréa Moreno-Beals, the performance took the songs to Adventure Time levels of vibrance and randomness. Songs like “Parrots in the Tropical Trees” completely stripped the audience’s minds from their surroundings. For people completely new to the band, they probably would not have been surprised to find out that they’ve just released a children’s storybook (with a couple of new songs to soundtrack it on 7” vinyl tucked inside).
Musically the band showed a great level of what I’ll call detailed simplicity in their sound. With only three of them onstage they managed to accomplish quite a lot. Drummer Trevor Hobbs simultaneously played keyboards, which allowed Moreno-Beals more freedom to use instruments like cello that brought something different to their sound. Middaugh also added texture by occasionally compressing his voice through an alternative microphone. The band also showed a Zen-like discipline, similar to Yo La Tengo or The Notwist, in the way that they decided to keep their songs at a steady tempo and volume instead of letting them fly off in a hackneyed epic conclusion as many bands would have done. The highlight of the set came when Middaugh started telling a seemingly off-the-cuff fairytale about a dragon and princess who were in love. The song gradually built up as the angry townspeople got involved and this all led smartly into their song “Dragon,” which involved audience participation in the form of the crowd divided into two sets of clapping and the chorus sung entirely in unison. It was the definition of what folk music is supposed to do: bring everyone together; even if this is rather idiosyncratic folk music.
Laura Gibson is currently on tour in support of her new album La Grande; an album that presents modern folk music in different styles. Bringing those sounds to the stage is undoubtedly a difficult thing and it seems like Gibson and her band are still wrestling with them. Not that the performance was bad, but it seems as though they haven’t quite yet figured out how to make the songs jump out at the listener in quite the same way as they do on record. The performance wasn’t completely without merit though; the title track – their “bossa nova song” – was a welcome upbeat turn amidst a bunch of mid-tempo tunes, and “Skin, Warming Skin” with its sweeping chorus showed a wider emotional range and drew in the audience. Around mid-way through the set the band left Laura alone on the stage to perform a song, but rather than take the opportunity to show the full capabilities of her vocal tact and lyrical skill, she played “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” a song that has been done to death and has at least two different untouchable recorded versions; i.e. a song that should be left alone, at least for now. Once the band returned to the stage they completed their set with more of the same, which would have likely delighted all fans in attendance, but would have had a hard time convincing others.
Regardless of whether she was impressive musically or not, it was undeniable that Gibson had plenty of charm about her. As she told us about her experiences with interviews it was hard not to laugh along. And, as she revealed that a couple of the goals for her band and Breathe Owl Breathe to do while on tour together were watch Jurassic Park and start a pickup basketball game, it was sort of tempting to stay after the show and try to steal away in their tour van because it seemed so fun. So I guess, in the end, Laura Gibson did help us escape from the gloomy clutches of The Echo after all.
