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Frontman Marshall Brown is hard to get a read on at first. My impression went something like this: my first comparison was to Jack Black as he stood there with his sport coat, ruffled shirt and velvet guitar strap, goofing around during soundcheck. After a short instrumental intro, I was comparing him to Warren Haynes as he wrenched out melancholy guitar licks on "Swollen Finger Blues." Then he started singing, and I was gonna call him Layne Staley til he jumped up into the falsetto stratosphere, at which point I was thinking Our Lady Peace. Put it this way: the guy is a formidable talent on a lot of levels.
"The guitar was blowing up under his fingers as he twisted notes for all they were worth, drops of pure soul being squished out of the sides.” |
The guys backing him up ain't bad either. Drummer Mitch Malyerck keeps the groove in the pocket throughout the course of Marshall's meanderings, which is probably not an easy thing to do. Jon Crowder and Kyle Senn show off their versatility by rotating among guitar, bass, and keyboard, depending on what the song calls for. Senn mostly uses the keyboard for spacey sound effects, though he added melodic elements in a few places. My favorite moment from Jon Crowder came during "Dying Man" when he used Tom Morello's famous technique of flicking the guitar's pickup switch to generate sounds. (If you're not familiar with this technique, check out the iconic solo on "Bulls on Parade." The effect is similar to a DJ's killswitch.)
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For me, the high point of the set was "Maybe There's A Sign", a ballad that began with melodic vocal lines over clean guitars and sound effects from the keyboard. The song progressed slowly, when Brown all of a sudden stepped on a fuzz pedal that must have been set for "stun." The guitar was blowing up under his fingers as he twisted notes for all they were worth, drops of pure soul being squished out of the sides. Many times, guitar solos get a bit lost in shows like this -- the mix doesn't allow them to be heard, or they're just plain forgettable. Marshall Brown made sure you wouldn't forget this one with just the perfect combination of distortion, decibels, and determination. I had my eyes squeezed shut, listening to Marshall wear it out, when I started hearing all these ghostly, glitchy melody notes behind the solo. For a second I thought dude was playing multiple lines at once (like on the movie "Exorcism of Emily Rose" where the chick talks in two voices at once...creepy!) However, it was Kyle Senn playing lines on the keyboard behind the guitar solo, which I thought was a really nice touch.
This blog would get really long if I went into more details about these songs, because they really cover a lot of ground in a short time. The basic elements are melodic verses, distorted choruses, bluesy solos, and bipolar vocals. Brown uses a lot of dissonance in his songwriting, but in a really tasty, melodic way -- think "The Sweater Song" by Weezer. The songs aren't overly long, though there are some epic moments -- there was one effects-laden jam that reminded me of something by The Doors. Put it this way -- if this band was an artist, it would have a palette with more colors than the stompboxes on Jon Crowder's pedal board.
Oh, and I've gotta tell you about the set's finale. Brown asked the crowd what they wanted to hear and The Reverie's fans unanimously begged for a song called "Everybody's Crazy." The band obliged with a quirky anthem recalling something by Queen -- tuneful, unpredictable, and hard-to-forget.
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Death & Taxes (excerpt)
Swollen Finger Blues
Dying Man
Kaleidoscopia
Maybe There's A Sign
That Was Just My Dream
Dark Hole
Norwegian Wood
Sewing Circle
TV Queen
(Note: These were the songs on the setlist Marshall gave me. They might not have played all of them.)
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