[ATTENDED: March 11, 2019] Trace Mountains
Pinegrove played three nights at House of Independents. Each night featured Poppies opening and then a second band in the middle slot. Saturday was Another Michael, Sunday was Brother Bird and Monday was Trace Mountains. Interestingly, I was supposed to see Brother Bird open for Lily & Madeleine a few weeks earlier, so I have now missed Brother Bird twice.
I hadn’t heard any of them, so that didn’t have any impact on which night I wanted to go. Originally it would have been Another Michael. But since I switched dates to Monday, I got to see Trace Mountains.
I also had no idea that I had recently seen the lead singer and guitarist of Trace Mountains, for he is Dave Benton of LVL UP. I was trying to remember whose songs I liked best when I saw LVL UP. All three singers sang and I enjoyed Benton’s more deadpan style of singing. It’s interesting that Trace Mountains was supposed to be a somewhat quieter side project and yet in my experience all of these songs were more rocking than his LVL UP songs.
Trace Mountains is (was?) his solo project. For this show the band was a four piece with a great lead guitarist and a solid rhythm section.
I can’t find the names of any of the players, but I really enjoyed the guitarist in the ocher cardigan who stood in front of me. He also plays keys. At one point he and Benton shares soloing duties which sounded pretty great.
Indeed, all of the songs were enjoyable. And there was a good variety in the songs. I didn’t catch song title, but while there were some real Stomping cuts they also changed up their delivery style with slower rockers like this one. I was also intrigued by Benton’s voice, because it sounded quite different depending on the song. And yet it never sounded quite as deadpan as he did with LVL UP.
Benton was an entertaining frontman as well. He joked (or maybe not) that he was happy to be there except that he was missing The Bachelor. There was also a funny moment in the middle of their set when someone started chanting “one more song” like they do for encores. But mid-set it came across as very funny and Benton was certainly in on the joke, “Sorry to disappoint you….”
I enjoyed their set quite a bit.
They went through the cycle of singers one more time and then played a couple more songs at the end. It was cool that they kept things moving and all sounding pretty different while maintaining their overall vibe.