[ATTENDED: May 10, 2016] OhBree
I was really excited to see The Family Crest and to see that they were playing at Boot & Saddle (how would they fit a 8 piece band up there, I wondered). I hadn’t heard of OhBree before this show, so I looked them up and discovered they are a Philly band also with 8 people (!) who play a wonderfully weird blend of punk with horns (but not ska) and super catchy rocking melodies. All supporting some pretty peculiar (and often amusing) lyrics.
The band is made up of Andrew Scott – Songwriting/Keys/Guitar/Bass/Vocals ; Adam Laub – Drums/Synthesizer/Vocals ; Bob Iacono – Trumpet ; Tyler Mack – Guitar/Bass/Trombone ; Kyle Press – Bari/Tenor Saxophone ; Vince Tampio – Mellophone/Trumpet/Slide Trumpet ; Lucas Kozinski – Guitar ; Connor Przybyszewski – Trombone
And they all crammed into that tiny Boot & Saddle stage which they had never played at before (a surprise given their Philly roots).They were loud, frenetic and fun. The band has a new album coming out in a few weeks (Burn Buildings Burn Pies) and they played a few songs from it. But they also played a number of songs from their earlier records (they have quite a few). The crowd seemed pretty familiar with them, I think–at least some of the old songs were greeted warmly.
But overall the audience was really impressed, at least I know I was. And I think we were all won over by the end of their set.
There was a sort of aggressive quality to the singing, and the singer reminded me at times of Weird Al in his delivery–intense, a little manic, darkly funny and with a pretty diverse delivery given that his voice does sound a bit like Al’s. And yet despite the aggressive 
singing, the music was always fun and swinging.
The right side of the stage featured the horns. A trumpet, a sax (the sax player was a hoot to watch as he often sang along to the songs in very dramatic fashion–getting on his knees during the emotional parts of the songs), and a trombonist–how you squeeze a trombone into that little space is quite a challenge. The trombone also switched to guitar from time to time, which was also neat.
The left side of the stage was the strings–electric guitar, bass and violin. What I really liked about their sound was that the strings were always present, usually creating the melodies, but that they occasionally gave up control to the horns–whether they had a choice or not, I suppose.
The center belonged to the drummer (who was fun to watch) and the singer/keyboardist who was hard to stop watching. Scott’s energy was infectious, as was his joy at playing.
While most of the songs were pretty fast, there were some slower moments. But more importantly, there was always a hook in the song to hang on to. There were catchy melodies and those horns really sweetened things. A song like Spine (from the new album), combined all of these qualities.
About halfway through the set, Scott took of his hat–which he originally didn’t want to move because it was sitting just right), revealing a wild hair cut and seemingly uncorking some extra energy. In this song, you can see him getting really intense. And I also love the way the wholes song shifts to a slow downtempo section before the clip ends.
I don’t really know what the setlist was (sometimes the chorus wasn’t the song title). But I really liked pretty much everything. The newer songs definitely seemed more sophisticated than the earlier ones, and that’s as it should be. But the old ones (he said they’d be playing at least one old favorite from We Miss You Edward, Come Home (all of five years old!)) were a lot of fun too.
OhBree is a great live band. If you can see them, definitely check them out, and if you need to hear them first, here’s a link to their Bandcamp site.
Leave a Reply