Great Lake Swimmers’ lovely set at the Larimer on Wednesday transported the audience to another, very moody place. Photos by Julio Enriquez.
beautifully sparse folk seemed more than a little incongruous among the torn paper and haphazardly stapled flyers on the walls of the last Wednesday night. Though the venue seems to feature a steady diet of punk, thrash, metal and overall mayhem most of the time, the Toronto band had no trouble making the place their own. And it was filled almost to capacity with a hip, indie-looking crowd that embraced their Appalachian-tinted folk wholeheartedly.
Backing up Tony Dekker’s understated, almost sacred vocals with a near-perfect composition of ethereal strings and ambience was a four-piece accompanying band that featured longtime bandmate Erik Arneson on banjo, electric guitar (including some nicely crafted psychedelic electric noises during a few songs) and harmonium, Bret Higgins on stand-up bass, Greg Millson on drums and Miranda Mulholland on violin and backup vocals. They played a long, quiet, 50-minute set that featured sacred, sublime arrangements of Dekker’s songs that promised to lead the audience down an imaginary, mist-covered trail or stream, each in their own warm and comfortable solitude.
They performed brilliant versions of “Pulling On A Line,” “Still,” “Everything is Moving So Fast” and “Palmistry,” each followed by quiet bouts of applause. Late in the set, all but Dekker left the stage to allow him to play “Concrete Heart,” a song that, Dekker explained, he was commissioned to write for the city of Toronto during a past architecture festival. His performance that night was shrill with a sound of heartbreak, and no doubt coaxed a few tears from even the most aloof of the hipsters filling the crowd. As the band returned and played “Various Stages,” their final encore, you could nearly feel the audience emit a communal exhale, spent and sated from the brilliant set.
, the latest musical project led by Andrew Kenny from American Analog Set, played a short but beautiful folky pop set to open for Swimmers as the crowd built. Centered around Kenny’s soft vocals and prominent bass trappings, the touring band onstage included some pretty weighty indie names, including Leslie Sisson (guitar and vocals, and former contributor to bands such as Black Lipstick and Windsor for the Derby), Matt Pond (rhythm guitar, and also the solo force behind Matt Pond PA) and Sean Haskins (drums, and also a brief member of American Analog Set).
Quiet and confident, the band’s set recalled almost too closely the sound of the Analog Set, and even threw in a cover of their popular song “Aaron & Maria,” amidst most of the tracks of the Birds’ new album “Magnolia.” Ponds and Sisson played exceedingly well off each other’s guitars, while Haskins added resonant rhythms that further highlighted Kenny’s bass as the group’s grounding instrument. Perfect examples were “False Alarm” and “Sugar,” a few brittle-yet-springy tunes that could have been covers of Yo La Tengo pieces, with some heavy Neil Young influence.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
Julio Enriquez is a Denver writer and photographer, editor of the blog and a regular contributor to Reverb.
