[ATTENDED: October 18, 2013] Whitehorse
Whitehorse opened for Barenaked Ladies at the Bethlehem Sands (our new favorite slightly larger venue–even if the acoustics aren’t great, the seating is good and the prices reasonable–we were in the 20th row for this set, which was really perfect).
I had never heard of Whitehorse, so when I saw that they were opening for Barenaked Ladies, I wanted to see what they were all about. I found a concert from Mountain Stage which was enjoyable but which I felt pigeonholed the band as a kind of country folk duo. They weren’t exactly what I imagined when I thought of an opening band for BNL. I actually wondered if BNL’s show would be more mellow in general, too.
Well, Whitehorse absolutely blew me away on stage.
They opened as I expected, with Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland (who were solo performers and recently got married) playing guitars and singing into one microphone (that last part I didn’t expect). They sounded great together. And the song (“No Glamour in the Hammer”) was very nice—mellow folk with a hint of country. And then things got really interesting. They each moved to a different microphone. McClelland switched to a bass, Doucet switched to an electric guitar. And then they started playing some percussion—Doucet played a bass drum with his foot while playing the guitar. Then he picked up some random percussion objects—small drums, maracas, even pots and pans—and hit them a few times. And that’s when I realized they were looping the percussion and building the rest of the song from that. McClelland played some keyboard and, at one point, she began singing into a distorted microphone to create some cool vocals which she also looped. A video camera closeup revealed that the “microphone” was actually an old-fashioned telephone. The first song went on for a pretty long time, building and growing and expanding And by the end of the song the crowd was hooked.
What was completely evident was just how much fun they were having. Both of them were smiling all the way through the set, in between singing of course. They looked at each other and shared moments, thanked us and BNL and told good stories to lead up to the songs. (more…)
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