Concert Review: Mist Gives Way to Sun at the Independent
By Rebecca Gayle
Entertainment Editor
Last Friday’s show at the Independent brought together three very different acts that made a very interesting whole.
The concert opened with Misty Mountain, a solo guitarist/vocalist who made it quite clear through his performance that making music constitutes a religious experience for him. Misty Mountain – whose name probably came about from some higher-being-inspired epiphany on top of a misty mountaintop – took the stage dressed in monk’s robe and wearing sunglasses.
There, he created a swirling mass of guitar sound paired with somewhat whiny and inaudible lyrics, all the while behaving as though his performance were a prayer or form of worship, reaching his hands desperately toward the heavens and bowing down to step his bare foot on the guitar pedal. Although his guitar-playing ability was rather impressive, his vocals and the lack of additional instruments that could utilize and augment the sounds he created with his electric guitar took more away from his music than it contributed. Furthermore, although Misty Mountain’s attempt to portray his musical act as a religious act was interesting to witness, it seemed hokier than sincere and, even with his music, failed to make a real impact on the audience.
Taking the stage after Misty Mountain, however, was the Antlers, a much more sincere and convincing group from Brooklyn, NY. The Antlers, who released Hospice earlier this year, manage to create a sound that fuses both hopefulness and sorrow, as if the young band is on the brink of becoming entirely jaded by age and experiences. Although the Antlers’ set was relatively slow-paced and uneventful in terms of entertainment, the trio certainly showcased their talent at story-telling and portraying emotion throughout the set. Peter Silberman, the lead singer and songwriter for the group, deftly utilizes his pure, sweet, boyish voice on lead vocals and manages to put a slightly hopeful tone on much of the groups’ rather depressing lyrics. (At the center of Hospice, after all, lies a relationship with a terminally ill child, which does not exactly lend the album and its songs much opportunity to uplift.) Somehow, the Antlers also manage to infuse additional bits of hope into the songs from Hospice through some very well-placed upbeat drumming and gentle keyboarding so that the song content, although heavy, does not become overly so. For being such a young band, the Antlers demonstrated a remarkable ability to not only tell a story with its songs, but also to aptly convey the pure emotion of the story content.
After experiencing Misty Mountain and the melting icicles of the Antlers, the Independent presented Sleepy Sun, a local psychedelic band that calls San Francisco home. Sleepy Sun was nothing like either of the opening bands, avoiding any kind of subtlety with its hard-driving percussion and riffing guitars. Although the Antlers’ performance was quite good, Sleepy Sun provided a distinct, refreshing contrast to the Antlers’ laid-back, lower-energy performance, blasting the audience’s ears with strong, soulful vocals and equally strong bass, guitar, and drums, as well as a peppering of percussion from maracas, blocks, and shells.
During its performance, Sleepy Sun was anything but sleepy. Much like the act-opening declaration of female vocalist, Rachel Williams, “This is going to get f@#$ing weird,” Sleepy Sun’s set certainly played to the unexpected. The band began many of its songs with slow-building musical intros and soft vocals, but, like a train that suddenly penetrates through a thick, dense fog, Sleepy Sun unexpectedly emerged from these moments of calm or silence with animal cries or intense jam sessions riddled with sound. Furthermore, vocalists Williams and Bret Constantino surprised with their impressively strong, soulful voices, both which overshadowed their relatively petite statures. The way in which Williams and Constantino harmonized together and highlighted each other’s vocal strengths above the din of shredding guitars, thumping drums and pounding bass was absolutely beautiful. Sleepy Sun certainly demonstrated that its strengths lie in its heavy instrumentation and uncompromising vocals, which was made all the more obvious by the band’s much weaker execution of the slower songs in its set. In addition to providing a very unique, yet familiar-sounding, psychedelic sound – complete with amazing guitar riffs and soulful vocals – Sleepy Sun also showcased itself as entertainers, with every member dedicatedly jamming on their instrument or dancing around on stage at virtually all times.
Given how different each of these bands were, it was very interesting to see them lumped together for one show at the intimate, garage-like venue that is the Independent. After a first-hand viewing of the talent that the Antlers and Sleepy Sun showcased in their sets, it will certainly be interesting to see in what directions each band goes and where they will end up next.
Rebecca Gayle is a second-year pharmacy student.
This article appeared in the November 5, 2009 issue of Synapse.
