[ATTENDED: August 11, 2017] Abi Reimold
I was under the impression that this Record Release Party for The Districts began at 8. I was running a little late and when I got to Callowhill Road, the street was blocked off.
For no apparent reason.
So I was detoured all over creation and wound up arriving at 8:15. I wondered if I’d missed the opening band entirely. But it turned out that the show actually started at 8:30, so all was okay and I got a good spot up close for Abi Reimold, a Philadelphia-based singer songwriter.
She sings straightforward, honest songs. Her voice is interesting in that it’s quite pretty but with a bit of an edge to it–a kind of smirking snarl–that I really liked.
I had listened to some songs on bandcamp and liked them, but not enough to get really excited by her. But she really impressed me live.
She played guitar and was accompanied by Mike on bass and Mike on drums. During her 30 or so minutes, she played several songs with the Mikes.
She worked really nicely with the loud/soft dynamic. A lot of her songs built to a big crescendo.
During a number of songs, she looped her guitar so that she could focus only on singing. And a few times she really hauled off and screamed (see the red photo).
The only thing I didn’t really like was that most of the big crescendo songs seemed to end with a quiet follow-up verse. So the crowd would get really hopped up for the raging end, and then the song would drop off and there’d be one more quiet verse or line. And that made us all stop cheering and start listening and then the song was over and the cheering wasn’t quite as raucous.
After a few songs, Mike and Mike left and she played two songs by herself. I loved that for one of the songs she looped herself singing a melody so that by the time the song fully engaged, she had a choir of her own voice. It sounded great. Sadly, I deleted the video I took of it (or it never recorded). These slower songs were very pretty but didn’t work that well in this environment–the crowd was ready to slam dance, and even if the quieter songs were nice, which they were, they felt a little long and the crowd grew a little restless.
But the final songs (I have no idea what the songs were called, although there was one song that she said she wrote either that day or that week), brought the Mikes back and they were suitably rocking.
The audience was definitely rooting for her. I am quite certain I was standing next to her parents and her brother (or boyfriend)–they were quite (justifiably) proud.
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