Vampire Weekend
by Kat Kellermeyer [thechickwhopwn3dyou@yahoo.com]
Online Exclusive / Posted January 10, 2008 More Exclusives
12.7.07; Kilby Court
By: Kat Kellermeyer
Shame on any of you who considered going to this show and then made some lame excuse about the weather. Sure, there was the large possibility of your tin-can car dying, or better yet, crashing on unplowed roads. Sure, you’d rather stay warm in bed than huddle around the fire pit or cram into the shack at Kilby. Sure, there are ten thousand reasons not to go, but using just one of them means you missed some of the best two reasons to drag your whiney ass to Kilby this winter.
I’d already made plans to see Vampire Weekend when someone from Grand Ole Party contacted SLUG regarding media coverage. Until the request went out, I had no idea who would be the opening act, and due to [insert lame excuse here], I wasn’t able to check into the group beforehand.
Read the fucking board (courtesy of myspace.com/vampireweekend)
Fortunately, Grand Ole Party was about to make themselves one of my favorite discoveries of the year. With an old bluesy style akin to Big Brother And The Holding Company— Janis Joplin’s original project for those not savvy—this three piece group knocked the wind right out of the crowd with brash, in-your-face tunes.
Watching Kristen Gundred perform is like watching an Olympic event in multi-tasking. As though drumming isn’t complicated enough, Gundred sings, too. Correction: she belts these tunes in an all-out bluesy wail and still manages a top-notch performance in every department; vocally, instrumentally and aesthetically. She doesn’t just sing the lyrics, she forces them on the audience with a strangle-hold intensity. No doubt Gundred has heard the Janis Joplin comparisons before, but the analogy falls short of doing true justice. A much cleaner sound than Joplin, her style is brash but crystal clear and vibrant at the same time. This girl’s voice just rings, especially in a venue like Kilby. Add in an almost Jack White-like emoting and lyrics like, "I must be the devil’s daughter; such a dark spirit to dwell in me," one could go so far as to compare Grand Ole Party to first-album White Stripes: complex blues in three part simplicity and vocals so heavy they give you chills.
Backed up vocally by guitarist John Paul Labno and bassist Mike Krechnyak, the trio didn’t bother easing into the performance, opening with "Nasty Habits," a heavy, haunting song made only eerier with Gundred’s spot-on vocals. All three perform with incredible intensity, more like a single unit than separate band members. Labno never has to struggle against the others when he goes into a solo. They have an amazing sense of balance and are definitely a potential powerhouse in blues-rock.
Grand Ole Party’s premiere album, Humanimals, has an incredible sound, but barely does them the same justice their live performance did. And anyone who has heard their music knows that’s saying quite a lot. And anyone who hasn’t heard their music, is seriously missing out.
Grand Ole Party put on enough of a show that I could have gone home happy with just having seen them. I was almost worried the only direction the show could go from there was down. But as luck would have it, it just kept getting better.
Page: [1] 2 Next >>
Facebook
Myspace
Twitter
YouTube
Vimeo
RSS
Be the first to comment!
Add a comment
Please keep your comments on the subject of the article.
We will delete your comment if it is racist, misogynistic, sexist, bigoted or just plain lame.
No HTML allowed!