Things we knew going into show at the on Monday night: The band, fully fleshed out into a six-piece, has really mastered the art of the live show. On the flip side, the group has been touring its excellent debut, “3 Rounds and a Sound,” for more than two years. And when you tour as heavily as Blind Pilot does, you need new music.
Things we knew coming out of the show: Blind Pilot has plenty of new music, and much of it sounds as you’d expect it to. (Lovely. Melodic. Mellow, but with builds. Smart.) The band played at least five new songs at the Fox, and while fans look forward to the band’s next release, the show acted as a sneak peak at what to expect from the group’s forthcoming record.
If Israel Nebeker and his band didn’t play every song off “3 Rounds,” they played most of them. And they sounded expectedly great, with some powerful flourishes in “Oviedo” and some unexpected instrumentation in “One Red Thread.” “Poor Boy” was somber, as was “I Buried a Bone,” but the songs’ depth have really taken hold with the band’s latest incarnation, which fills Nebeker’s songs with life and emotion.
It’s tough to talk about the new material without song titles, but most of the new tracks would have sounded perfectly at home on “3 Rounds.” There were some lulling, thoughtful numbers and others that explored slightly more upbeat territory. The band’s encore included their Gillian Welch cover, “Look at Miss Ohio” — a song that has specific resonance in Colorado, Nebeker said, because the band saw Welch when . The encore also included an almost-zany near-calypso number that seemed out of place — yet it acted as a lovely, upbeat goodbye for the evening.
Since we’ve seen Blind Pilot on this record so many times, it was fun to focus on the players Nebeker has surrounded himself with — and it was easy to fall for each of them. Kati Claborn alternated between banjo and dulcimer with a sense of ease, and it wasn’t uncommon for her instrument to take the lead. Ian Krist’s vibraphone work is sterling — stunning, even — and it’s hard to imagine the band without he and his instrument. The rest of the players — drummer Ryan Dobrowski included, as he’s been there since the beginning — are talented and complimentary to one another. And as much fun as Monday’s show was, we’ll have more fun listening to the new Blind Pilot record.
We got there early to catch opener Cory Chisel, who played a lengthy set of pensive numbers and boozed-up ragers. Chisel’s voice is singular and strong, and his performance was elevated by his bandmate, Adriel Harris — a gorgeous woman who, when she opened her mouth to sing, had a grisly, almost-haunted voice that sounds three times her actual age.
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Ricardo Baca is the founder and co-editor of and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post.
