[ATTENDED: July 23, 2022] Mary Lattimore
I’ve been a fan of Beach House for a long time. When they announced the opening bands, I was pretty psyched that we were getting Mary Lattimore (I don’t know any of the other artists).
I saw Mary Lattimore open for Parquet Courts about four years ago and I was blown away by her amazing harp playing.
Mary Lattimore is kind of the go-to harpist for rock albums. She has played on all kinds of albums including two from Philly local Kurt Vile (Smoke Ring For My Halo & Wakin on a Pretty Daze).
The show wasn’t very crowded yet and I told my family that I wanted to get pretty close to the stage for this set. So I moved in and had a really nice view of Mary’s hands as she played.
Mary’s songs are instrumental and they are beautiful, but also sad and thoughtful. She had videos projected behind her (they were weird and looping and grainy).
She played about five songs, giving a brief introduction to each one. She told us that she wrote “For Scott Kelly, Returned to Earth” for astronaut Scott Kelly and even sent him a copy, which he listened to in space, which is pretty wild.
One thing I love about Mary is that she plays all parts of her harp. She taps the side and makes percussive sounds. She also has an effects pedal and is able to morph and loop the sounds that she makes. Plus, she uses all of the notes. Even the tiny high notes. And the low low notes (those were remarkably deep).
After several songs she announced a guest. A young girl named Delphine came out. She sat at her small harp with incredible form. Then she and Mary played a duet of Mary’s “Wawa by the Ocean.” It was lovely and adorable. And once you got over how adorable it was you realized how good Delphine was.
Then Mary said that Delphine’s father was going to come out and do a song with her. And Delphine’s father was Kurt Vile!
What a surprise. I mean, maybe not 100% surprise as Kurt does tend to make a random appearance from time to time, but we never seem to get anything like that at our shows. So he sat there with his guitar and they played “Ghost Town” the Kurt Vile song.
We had just seen Kurt so this was like a really delayed encore and that was a lot of fun too.
Overall, I feel like the audience could have been a little more respectful of the harp, but whatever, the harp is a hard sell for a rock crowd.
I’m just glad I got to see her again.
(sort of setlist)
- The Warm Shoulder
- For Scott Kelly, Returned to Earth
- Otis Walks Into the Woods
- It Feels Like Floating
- Wawa by the Ocean (with Delphine Vile)
- Ghost Town (with Kurt Vile}
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