Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - Paradise Rock Club (Boston, MA; Dec. 6, 2007)

In preparation for this show, I had been reading about Grace Potter in various publications.  A lot.  And everyone was gushing, GUSHING over Potter and her band, the Nocturnals.  There were plenty out there proclaiming the coming of the Messiah and a great day of Terror and Woe soon to come upon us, since surely some sort of revelation must be at hand.  So I read these articles, and I listened to the tracks available on Potter’s MySpace page, and I watched the Leno spot and various video shorts and interviews on the website.  And I was preparing to be profoundly disappointed, since, while Potter can sing, and I do mean Sing, and the Nocturnals can most certainly Play, the songs themselves really didn’t do anything for me.  I didn’t think that the writing was anything special, nor that there was anything different or new in their sound.  Comparisons have been made to Norah Jones, early Bonnie Raitt, occasionally Zeppellin or Hendrix-inspired licks, and I certainly agreed that that was all there.  But, again, I really didn’t hear anything new or special in the sound.  So I went to the first of three shows in Boston.

And I was rocked completely.

This was actually the perfect experience to have at this point in melophobe’s development, I think.  The point is to see live shows (experiencing perfect synaestesia, I guess), and get a greater experience than mere listening while studying or drinking or reading around the apartment.  The point is to stand around large monitors and amps and feel live music.  And this was just the concert to remember that.

Now, a note about the Thursday night crowd, and I promise, I’m just gonna hit it and quit: normally we’re among the older 20% at the Dise; we were easily in the younger 20%.  And by a significant margin, too.  This was surprising, especially for a Thursday night, as the Thursday shows are often good first-stops on the BC/BU going-out circuit.  What was, say, “different” about the crowd, though, was its diversity, not just of age, but of, for lack of a better term, stylistic/sub-cultural sectors.  We had a few of our usual Allston/Boston hipsters, but then there were some new types: your young professionals (in jackets, ties, and wedding bands), your older non-professionals (in too-small t-shirts and too-large jeans), your hippy-dippy chicks (in hair-wrappings, simple halters and body odor), and various and assorted male Grace Potter-oglers and lust-afterers.  Also, it was not at all a packed room, so I’m not really sure why the afore-mentioned young professionals had to drunkenly jostle to the front of the stage to shout their coarse, hoarse, post-fratboy hollers and whoops.  But maybe I’m just not properly trained to understand that bit.  Ok, quittin’.

The following will almost certainly seem like a sexist comment, and it is, if you define “sexist” as pointing out common differences between boys and girls: many, many women who play in a rock band look supremely awkward with a guitar.  A friend suggested that this is a problem of scale; that an average-sized woman wouldn’t look awkward with a smaller guitar than men usually use.  And there’s certainly the Freudian, guitar-as-phallus issue to consider, but I’m not actually interested in talking about this as social or psycho-sexual commentary because: Grace Potter looks like she was born holding her Gibson Flying V (ouch, by the way).  Potter is equally comfortable, indeed, peaceful, sitting at her B-3, crying, declaiming into whichever mic happened to be closest, the guts of her Leslie open behind her.  She really is the most peaceful-looking performer I’ve seen, and through this, or perhaps because of this, she really does enjoy herself up on stage.  She loves every moment of it, and not in a self-aggrandizing fashion, I don’t think.  She clearly loves the music, loves the feel of the keys with their electric click or the weight of her guitar as she gets up from her bench and dons her axe.  Potter also interacts very well, both with her fantastic band of very talented, very performance-oriented boys, and coyly with the audience.  She does not, though, flirt with the crowd in any way near like what, say, The Pipettes pull off.  Rather, she matter-of-factly acknowledges that the crowd is there, makes sure everyone is having an all right time, but still is clearly fine playing her music for herself, for her band.  It’s refreshingly unaffected, and made for an excellent experience.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals are clearly road-tested, having logged thousands and thousands of miles and hundreds of gigs in the last few years.  As such, when guitarist Scott Tounet’s wahwah failed just as he was launching into what was supposed to be a solo, he sort of half-laughed, looked off at the most attentive and quick-on-the draw tech I’ve seen and just danced around while he got his juice back.  By the time he did, he had missed his solo, but was still smiling, was still into the song, and got right back into it on the next number, a rollicking Hendrix tune, with Potter and Tounet trading licks on the Hammond and guitar.  Rounding out the Nocturnals (and in addition to several owl figurines, a stuffed raccoon and Animal (of Muppets fame)), were the excellent Matt Burr on drums and Bryan Dondero on bass.  A newly-shorn Dondero (who apparently ruined the uniformly shaggy aesthetic worn by Potter and the rest) was really exactly what you’d want from an bassist: he was meticulously rhythmic while still being able to play with the forms; understated and shying away from the front of the stage, but still clearly a presence.  Burr… man, he’s just fun to watch.  He plays every part of his kit with every piece of his sticks, and as such gets many more sounds out of a slightly enlarged standard kit than your average drummer.  He dives across his snare and bass drum to stop his cymbals from riding, or alternatively plays the part of the cymbal farthest from him, all the way towards the audience.  He’s fun to watch, and fantastic to hear.

I cannot but gush about the encore, as it was something special.  The band finished up an excellent “Over Again” and said their thanks and left the stage.  The two band assistants/tech/traveling crewmembers came up, reset a couple of things, and then left promptly.  Potter came right back out on stage after some empassioned hootin’ and hollerin’ (and young-professional declarations of, if not love, then certainly some kind of truly cretinous lust) in the audience.  While everyone was still cheering and clapping, Potter, alone on a dark stage, started into an a capella “Nothin’ But the Water,” wailing and twisting her body and voice around every single little note of her impressive vocalise.  The Nocturnals soon joined her, and after rocking into the full-band section, all four members gathered around Burr’s drum kit.  For the next several minutes, they traded patterns and fills, Potter banging away on the bass drum from down in front, occasionally hammering on a cow bell or one of the cymbals.  Tounet gamely tried his hand on the toms, and actually produced pretty interesting rhythms.  Dondero seemed slightly more practiced, and was able to lead a little bit more.  Burr was clearly not content to drum on the kit, and soon worked his way up to cymbal stands, mic stands, the stage, and then back into his snare and hat, again diving over most of the kit to silence the cymbals when they finally finished their play.  They finished up the encore by all singing, un-mic’d, the “Tried my hand at the Bible, tried my hand at prayer” refrain, bowed, arms around each other, and walked off still dancing, smiling, and singing.

So it’s really no surprise, then, that Grace Potter and the Nocturnals enchanted the entire crowd, and not just this guy. 

review to your liking? You'll sweat:

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - Wilbur Theatre (Boston, MA; Sept. 25, 2008)

Nicole Atkins and the Sea - The Triple Door (Seattle, WA; Mar. 1, 2008)

Crooked Still - Bowery Ballroom (New York, NY; July 16, 2008)

The Mountain Goats + The Moaners - The Middle East Downstairs (Cambridge, MA; Mar. 15, 2008)

1 comments thus far ...

Concerts We Recommend

melophobe sponsors

Connect To melophobe

1. melophobe
2. concert reviews
3. fifty-word reviews
4. articles
5. links
6.