Show review: Callers and Wye Oak at Brighton Music Hall – 9/19
Recurrent tour-mates Callers and Wye Oak showcased different but complementary sounds running the gamut from jazz to shoegaze at Brighton Music Hall last Wednesday.
Much as they did at August’s Dirty Projectors show, Callers opened the evening with a striking set of mercurial and soulful songs. The quartet alternated between slow-paced, eerie, nighttime vibes and upbeat jams with a jazzy rhythmic interplay as the common element. They would build up an atmosphere and break it down just as quickly, keeping the audience constantly on its toes. Two and occasionally three guitars were on stage at once, but the arrangements never felt crowded or overpowering. Callers know the value of restraint and sonic space in their sound, and they employ both rather effectively.
Elements as disparate as jazz, soul, blues and math-rock crept their way into the band’s sound. The percussion took constant unexpected turns, never sticking to a single rhythm for long before adding or subtracting some twist or flourish. The rhythms stopped, started and changed time in ways you never quite saw coming. Guitarist Ryan Seaton doubled as a bassist with his low strings while his bandmates interwove melodies and textural guitar sounds. Sara Lucas’ alternately forceful and haunting vocals floated above the songs, always arresting and sincere. Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner joined the band for backup vocals on one song, pleasantly blending the two distinctly different but equally stunning female vocal styles which anchor both bands.
Callers have an earnest presence on stage. They throw themselves into their songs and give the sort of emotive performances that really sell an audience on their music. Much like the August show, a crowd who paid to see the headliner gave them a hushed, engaged attention denied to most opening acts. Callers’ technically accomplished, layered and distinct compositions are always a treat. They’re surely a band to keep an eye on.
Baltimore-based duo Wye Oak are currently floating in the transitional space between a stellar breakout record and figuring out where to go next. 2011’s Civilian was the band’s most accomplished and lauded album to date – a confident expansion of their electric folk meets shoegaze aesthetic. Their setlist still drew heavily from that album, but also included several new songs exploring a more hypnotic, swirling, psychedelia-rooted sound. A heavier keyboard presence and fewer mid-song dynamics shifts might indicate a change in approach for LP number four, but the new material never felt out of place.
On songs old and new, Wasner and drummer/keyboardist/bassist Andy Stack produced a whole lot more sound than what might seem possible from only two people. Their live sound is so full and lush that one could easily mistake them for a three or four person band if they weren’t watching the duo work. Stack drums with one hand and uses the other for keyboard melodies and pedal manipulation while Wasner’s guitar leaps from restrained finger-picking to massive sheets of distortion and back again. Her playing melds tender aspects of country and folk with walls of shoegaze noise, and her commanding voice pierces the maelstrom with quietly devastating lyrics. Wye Oak conjure up a rather impressive storm – Wasner is two guitarists, a frontwoman and a killer lyricist rolled into one, and Stack is an impressive multi-instrumentalist who comprises a rhythm section unto himself.
Callers and Wye Oak are bands with fairly limited sonic commonalities, but they work remarkably well on the same bill. There’s a shared innovative spirit between them; a status as bands who are doing and creating something uncommon and genuinely resonant for their audiences. Both succeeded in wowing a near-capacity Wednesday night audience at Brighton.
Callers:
Wye Oak:
