Live Threads – Reverb: Wye Oak at Larimer Lounge, Saturday, April 2, 2011

Live Threads – Reverb: Wye Oak at Larimer Lounge, Saturday, April 2, 2011

April 4, 2011 Off By Billy Thieme
Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner brought a blues-y heaviness to the Baltimore band's folk rock at the Larimer Lounge last Saturday night. (Photo: Nathan Armes, heyreverb.com)

Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner brought a blues-y heaviness to the Baltimore band's folk rock at the Larimer Lounge last Saturday night. (Photo: Nathan Armes, heyreverb.com)

At the Larimer Lounge on Saturday night, Jenn Wasner mentioned that she and bandmate Andy Stack of the Baltimore band Wye Oak, were tired. And justifiably so, having come from Salt Lake City that day, and in the very beginning of a 10-day stretch of their current tour that travels through the midwest and up into Montreal before they get a night off.

This apparent exhaustion, however, didn’t seem to make any difference in the duo’s performance.

A more valid reason the two should be tired, in fact, was the fury and passion they poured into an hour-long set. Often lumped in with indie or folk rock bands, presumably due to a tendency to alternate between screeching distortion and sparse minimalism on record, the pair was anything but mere folk that night. Wasner wailed meditations on solitude, love and aloneness and masterfully wrangled her guitar, while Stack covered the rest. Stack’s ability to multi-task the entire balance of such a huge sound — playing a trap set with both feet and his right hand while pounding on keyboards for both bass and melody with his left — was stunning to watch.

 

Read the entire review, and see more of Nathan Armes‘ photos of the show at HeyReverb.com!

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  • Billy Thieme

    Aging punk rocker with a deep of all things musical and artistic, enough to remain constantly young and perpetually mystified. Billy has journalistic dreams, but of a decidedly pastoral, Scottish nature.