Phosphorescent has a lot of heart. They're also dead sexy, in that lonesome-cowboy-just-hold-me-before-i-have-to-hit-the-trail nobody-can-understand-my-pain sort of way. Lead singer, Matthew Houck, besides being the principle source of the sexiness, also has one of the smoothest voices out there, kind of like a softer, sadder Band of Horses. Their piano player, also quite good, plays some strenuous double octave lines with both hands, wow! I couldn't really hear the lead-guitarist with the sweet mustache, cuz he was on the other side of the stage, but I think he was good? my only complaint would be the drummer, who wasn't always playing the fills exactly how i wanted to hear them, but overall it didn't subtract too much from the performance. I thought that "Wolves" would be my favorite song live (cuz it's my fav on record), but surprisingly "My Dove, My Lamb" and "A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise" came out really nice last night. If you can, go check 'em out...
Sometimes it's nice to see a really forlorn and heart-broken lead vocalist. It reminds you that not all music is being made just for some sort of vacuous goal of fame and fortune. Openers, The Acorn play sad acoustic indie-folk, with nice vocal harmonies and multi-layered classical and acoustic guitar parts. The lead vocalist was a little too hot in the monitors for me, so at times I would be turned off by his vocal part, but the harmonies provided by the bass player, who sang almost every word, were quite nice and kept me from being turned off prematurely. Speaking of maturity, they seemed a bit young, and could use a little more time to marinate in ye ole rock-and-roll oven, but they are definitely heading in the right direction. A little more experimentation, and maybe even an overdrive or delay pedal somewhere in the mix, might give what they lack...
Closers, Bowerbirds, were pretty good, doing that girl/boy everything is lovey-dovey harmony stuff. Sometimes it felt a little sparse though, and their songs could use another instrument. Just my opinion dudes.
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