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Beak & Skiff Apple Orchards in the central New York town of Lafayette continues to be a first-rate site for summer concerts with its sprawling, bucolic campus and spacious concert area. Wednesday night’s performance from Seattle band The Head and the Heart only reinforced this impression with a solid lineup of indie anthems.
First on stage was Phosphorescent, the project of Nashville-based Matthew Houck. He and his band opened the show with a set of laid-back, indie soft rock — a hint of twang emanating from pedal steel player Ricky Ray Jackson. Houck sang in a conversational tone throughout, which he attributed in part to the temporarily limited range of his damaged voice. The result was a hushed quality in the music which gave it a sense of urgency, but perhaps most importantly provided a smooth segue to the grander, arena pop vibes to follow during The Head and the Heart’s performance.
Phosphorescent’s songs were unwaveringly pleasant from a musical perspective, though the lyrics in songs such as “The World Is Ending” and “Song for Zula” contained a dark loneliness. The latter directly quotes the opening line of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” before stating “But I know love as a fading thing.” Another highlight was Houck’s rendition of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” first released in 1946 and later covered by Hank William Sr., Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson, among many others.
Stylistically, there was no obvious connection between Phosphorescent and the main attraction. The Head and the Heart plays anthemic pop, with the faintest roots of folk and Americana poking through an acoustic core of select songs and the frequent presence of fiddle, which band member Charity Rose Thielen embedded as a textural element in the synth-heavy mix.
The folk influence could also be felt in the communal vibe of the songs themselves, which is somewhat lost in studio recordings but was fully felt in the warm, familial connection between the band and its fans. In the middle of the set, guitarist-singer Matt Gervais declared of the scene at Beak & Skiff, “This very much feels like home," before playing “In the Orchard.”
The Head and the Heart leaves plenty of room for wordless vocal hooks of the “la de da” variety, which only serve to make the infectious tunes more like modern folk singalongs. This anthemic togetherness lost some of its authenticity as the night wore on, feeling more and more like the implementation of a proven pop formula in which there was little room for spontaneity on the part of the musicians, nor surprise on the part of the audience.
But if that was the reality, the majority of the concertgoers at the apple orchard didn’t seem to see it that way. It felt like witnessing the last step in the Coldplay-ification of a band — neither a good or a bad thing, necessarily. Ultimately, it’s about whether or not the music moved the people who came to hear it. And of that, there was no doubt.
As The Head and the Heart made quick work of beloved songs from their catalog spanning 15 years — from early songs such as the piano-bar shuffle “Ghosts” and the Lumineers-esque “Lost in My Mind” to the subtly propulsive Americana cut “Another Story” and later singles like the tidy pop song “Honeybee” and the U2-indebted ”Hurts (But It Goes Away).” There was also the inclusion of a new song, “Arrow,” which harkened back to older, acoustic-centric tracks and will likely be a single on the band’s forthcoming sixth studio album.
As a whole, the set was mixed wonderfully by the sound engineer in the booth, with the best sonic results yielded when standing behind the 20-odd rows of people crowded toward the front of the stage. The Head and the Heart concluded the night with a generous three-song encore, closing with the ever-popular “Rivers and Roads.”
The Head and the Heart head to the New England region next on its tour, before returning to the Finger Lakes region for a show with Phosphorescent at Kodak Center on Monday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m. For more info, go to kodakcenter.com.
Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].
First on stage was Phosphorescent, the project of Nashville-based Matthew Houck. He and his band opened the show with a set of laid-back, indie soft rock — a hint of twang emanating from pedal steel player Ricky Ray Jackson. Houck sang in a conversational tone throughout, which he attributed in part to the temporarily limited range of his damaged voice. The result was a hushed quality in the music which gave it a sense of urgency, but perhaps most importantly provided a smooth segue to the grander, arena pop vibes to follow during The Head and the Heart’s performance.
Phosphorescent’s songs were unwaveringly pleasant from a musical perspective, though the lyrics in songs such as “The World Is Ending” and “Song for Zula” contained a dark loneliness. The latter directly quotes the opening line of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” before stating “But I know love as a fading thing.” Another highlight was Houck’s rendition of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” first released in 1946 and later covered by Hank William Sr., Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson, among many others.
Stylistically, there was no obvious connection between Phosphorescent and the main attraction. The Head and the Heart plays anthemic pop, with the faintest roots of folk and Americana poking through an acoustic core of select songs and the frequent presence of fiddle, which band member Charity Rose Thielen embedded as a textural element in the synth-heavy mix.
The folk influence could also be felt in the communal vibe of the songs themselves, which is somewhat lost in studio recordings but was fully felt in the warm, familial connection between the band and its fans. In the middle of the set, guitarist-singer Matt Gervais declared of the scene at Beak & Skiff, “This very much feels like home," before playing “In the Orchard.”
The Head and the Heart leaves plenty of room for wordless vocal hooks of the “la de da” variety, which only serve to make the infectious tunes more like modern folk singalongs. This anthemic togetherness lost some of its authenticity as the night wore on, feeling more and more like the implementation of a proven pop formula in which there was little room for spontaneity on the part of the musicians, nor surprise on the part of the audience.
But if that was the reality, the majority of the concertgoers at the apple orchard didn’t seem to see it that way. It felt like witnessing the last step in the Coldplay-ification of a band — neither a good or a bad thing, necessarily. Ultimately, it’s about whether or not the music moved the people who came to hear it. And of that, there was no doubt.
As The Head and the Heart made quick work of beloved songs from their catalog spanning 15 years — from early songs such as the piano-bar shuffle “Ghosts” and the Lumineers-esque “Lost in My Mind” to the subtly propulsive Americana cut “Another Story” and later singles like the tidy pop song “Honeybee” and the U2-indebted ”Hurts (But It Goes Away).” There was also the inclusion of a new song, “Arrow,” which harkened back to older, acoustic-centric tracks and will likely be a single on the band’s forthcoming sixth studio album.
As a whole, the set was mixed wonderfully by the sound engineer in the booth, with the best sonic results yielded when standing behind the 20-odd rows of people crowded toward the front of the stage. The Head and the Heart concluded the night with a generous three-song encore, closing with the ever-popular “Rivers and Roads.”
The Head and the Heart head to the New England region next on its tour, before returning to the Finger Lakes region for a show with Phosphorescent at Kodak Center on Monday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m. For more info, go to kodakcenter.com.
Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].
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