Saturday, January 23, 2010

Concert review: Bear in Heaven, Freelance Whales, Mariage Blanc @ Brillobox

Bear in Heaven, Freelance Whales, Mariage Blanc
Saturday January 16, Brillobox
with Lisa, Robert, Jessie

This was a really good show, overall. Each of the three bands was enjoyable, energetic, and happy to be performing music for the Pittsburgh crowd. As always, the Brillobox crowd was way too fucking chatty, and I remember being momentarily impressed when Freelance Whales managed to lull everyone into a relative silence towards the end of one of their songs.
Specifically, I was very impressed with the drummer for Bear in Heaven; he was proficient, played fast notes with no apparent effort, and played very loudly. But most significantly, he performed with a lucid, loose, flowing, organic manner that made it seem like the music was flowing out of him and not like he was a human metronome (which he was). Also, the constant lineup changes during the Freelance Whales set would perhaps be overwhelming or annoying to some (like Jessie, as she pointed out during the car ride home) but I was thoroughly impressed by it. Plus, the bass player (well, primary one, at that) was carried onstage via a piggyback ride from the guitar player. Who doesn't love that? It seemed like they were incredibly excited to be onstage playing music the whole time, and that energy got fed right to the crowd. Their songs included 5 part harmonies and bowed guitars, which is awesome. Mariage Blanc was fun and melodic. I feel like they weren't entirely confident onstage, but that comes with time. All of their riffs and melodies were catchy and fun sounding, and everyone seemed to be quite skilled at their instruments.
Oh, I think we're deaf now, too.

I think I'm going to try to always post links to youtube videos of bands playing live so that you can get a better idea of what I saw. Enjoy.

Bear in Heaven live
Freelance Whales live
Couldn't find video of Mariage Blanc, but here's their first album available for free download.

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