[ATTENDED: April 28, 2017] Pinegrove
I first heard Pinegrove on NPR and then I saw their Tiny Desk Concert. I really liked them and when they announced that sales of their online music would send all proceeds to Planned Parenthood, I knew I had to buy their tunes. I was also swayed by the fact that they are from Montclair, NJ, a town not to far from where I grew up.
They have been getting fairly popular as of late which I think is wonderful. And I hope that they continue to thrive and get bigger and bigger. So that when they are opening for someone at Madison Square Garden, I can say I saw them in a church basement with 600 other people (tickets sold out pretty quickly and I saw people were offering their first-born children for a ticket).
I have never been to a concert where the audience knew and loudly sang every word to nearly every song. By my reckoning, everyone knew every word to every song on Cardinal, their full length debut. There are 8 songs on it and the band played 7 of them–not in order–during their 16 song set. In fact when they opened the show with “Old Friends” the first song on the disc, the room erupted singing along to every word. And since it was such a small place–with particularly low ceilings–it was the loudest singalong I’ve ever heard. Check out these clips from “Cadmium.” It was very cool.
Even more cool was how great the band sounded. I mentioned before how great the sound was. I want to say it sounded great for a church basement but it was great for almost any room–the band sounded big and loud and perfect. And that’s good because Sarah and I were simply incapable of pushing our way closer to the stage. It was packed, it was 95 degrees in there and while we did buy some water bottles we were not willing to fight the crowd to get closer. That means that I never really saw the band. I did see singer Evan Stephens Hall a few times, and when I held my camera up (there was literally no one behind me) I was able to see more of the band. That plus the dark panelled room did not encourage good photos.
I was honestly surprised at how hard it was to see the stage given how small the place was, but in fact the basement was pretty long, so I guess it makes sense.
But the overall vibe was so great, it didn’t matter. There were people in the back by us dancing, there were a few guys singing a long so loud and emphatically pumping their fists to the words. I was shocked at how much people love this band who literally have one 30 minute album and a new collection of all their old stuff as recorded output (between the 2 discs it’s a total of 29 songs). It was really a great experience.
And Hall mentioned a few times how unique this was and how memorable the venue was and how the band was clearly excited by how into it we were. And I can’t help but thing the fed off of that.
For an encore, they joked that they would walk over there for about ten seconds (they had an 11 o’clock curfew and finished with a couple minutes to spare). Hall talked about the People’s Climate March in DC that the band was going to the next day (and playing in DC that night).
And they encored with “Recycling” (how many songs mention ocelots?) and a totally crowd singing along version of “New Friends.”
I’m told that the band often hangs around and chats and takes pictures, but it was so hot we could not wait to get out of there. And after the show we went to Shoo Fry for poutine, which was delicious.
I certainly hope they come to another local venue (they’ve been to Philly 3 times in a year). I’d love it if it was a nice Jersey venue, mind you. But I would absolutely see them again, hopefully in a venue where I can actually see them!
SETLIST
- Old Friends*
- Aphasia*
- Visiting*
- Over My Shoulder
- V
- Waveform
- Angelina
- Easy Enough
- Cadmium*
- Size of the Moon*
- Paterson + Leo
- Problems
- Need 2
- The Metronome
- Recycling
- New Friends*
*from Cardinal
You can also watch a video of the show from Cemetery Tapes
Leave a Reply