As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Sara Bareilles w/ special guests Lucius and Emily King, Wolf Trap Filene Center, 7/14/2014


Coming off two Grammy nominations (Album of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance), Sara Bareilles is definitely in the big leagues now. Her performance Monday night featured elaborate yet tasteful lighting and a video projection system that was used advantageously on a number of songs. She began her 90-minute set with “Little Black Dress”, and ended on a high note with “Love Song”, a well-chosen En Vogue cover in “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”, “King of Anything” (where she directed a two-part audience singalong), and “Brave”. She just had time for one encore prior to the Wolf Trap curfew. In between, she featured a number of other cuts from her latest album, including “Hercules”, “I Choose You”, and “I Wanna Be Like Me”. I was impressed overall – great voice, which she’s smart enough not to get too fancy with, and a good rapport with the sold-out audience, many of whom seemed to be enthusiastic hard-core fans. My one complaint was that the bass was mixed up so high that it was physically painful – I could feel my chest vibrating on all but the most subdued numbers.

Emily King started things off with a 25-minute neo-soul set that was pleasant if not particularly memorable. (She does have the Janelle Monae hairstyle down though.) Lucius then followed with an enthusiastically-received 38-minute set – the other 3 members of my group all got copies of the CD. I had earlier bought “Turn It Around” in iTunes after hearing it a few times on WXPN. (They’re also playing at the station’s upcoming Exponential Music Festival.) My feelings about their set were a little more mixed; except for “Turn It Around” and one or two other songs, I felt a disconnect between their material, much of which featured lovely vocal harmonies by group co-founders Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, and the arrangements, where the “driving indie-pop percussion” (according to the blurb in the program) featured as many as 4 members of the band simultaneously banging on various drums, in an apparent effort to beat the defenseless melodies and harmonies into submission. At its peak, it reminded me of nothing so much as Adam Ant’s body of work from the 1980s.

Much of the area had rain in the afternoon, but fortunately the weather had calmed down for the show. It took us an hour both to get from Rockville to the Panera on Leesburg Pike (really slow traffic on the Beltway), and to get back to Rockville after the show (mainly the 38 minutes before we finally got out of the far parking lot). It was good that I had read Wolf Trap’s “friendly event reminber” email last week, since it revealed that the show would start at 7:30 rather than the originally-scheduled 8:00.

No comments:

Post a Comment