Last night was the night of mini-bands with big sounds! Lantrn‘s opened the night, they’re a three piece consisting of Kaitlyn Mills on vocals and keyboards, joined by Jenny Palumbo on bass and Sridhar Ravichandran (ex Heliotropes) on guitar. Mills has a voice that can both pierce and quell, Palumbo’s vibing humanizes their ethereal sound, while Ravichandran and Mills instrumental interplay tie the scene. Ravichandran’s tone choices were obvious by the hotness of soap bar pickups in his Jaguar to his Vox usage, which is my personal favorite amp to wash heavy delay use without ever sounding flat or dull. Points for sneaking in a Sia cover! It’s always refreshing to step outside of the 4-piece dynamic and hear how a band fills the spectrum. The strength of Lantrn’s songwriting certainly helps them through that dance I see many bands that play without a drummer do. Because (empty) space can act like a fourth band member, you have to respect them and give them due or they can work against you.
Finally after having another drink as the sun began to sink, hanging with the group for a bit, we trickled back to watch the headliner Yes Alexander. Whom I’ve never heard till watching them live. If you think of the sonic dance of a three-piece, can you imagine just two? Yes Alexander has a unique voice, from high’s to near yodel’s she’s always on the edge of something about to fall off with nothing but a keyboard to hold her grip. She’s backed equally and only by Charles Earl Richard on drums, his range of tribal rhythms, nordic, and jazz really add an extra member to the group, playing poly-rhythms galore over Alexander’s dynamic music, which I realized halfway into the set that many of the rhythms made possible to play over had a lot to do with the writing and the relationship became apparent in my mind then how a two piece can achieve consonance.