Saturday, May 14, 2011

Tomten, Fox and the Law, The Turpentines, and Ambulance at the Vera Project 5-13-11

Saw an excellent all-local lineup at the Vera Project on Friday the 13th.

First up was Ambulance
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Classic power trio arrangement playing good guitar oriented rock, good stuff!

Nice dynamics and movement, great way to start off the show.


Next up was The Turpentines.
Tomten 007Power trio lineup again, their sound was heavily electric blues influenced, with some explicit references to early Led Zeppelin (or maybe to the older blues artists that Zeppelin cribbed from).

I really enjoy the music, this reminds me of the blues rock or "heavy metal" I grew up listening to back in the seventies, some of my earliest favorite bands played similar stuff, and the Turpentines played it very well.


Next was Fox and the Law, playing with 2 guitars, bass and drums.
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They had a richer, deeper sound with the 2 guitars, allowing for some additional complexity in the upper registers.

The frequent leads and grinding rhythm guitar along with the solid rhythm section gave them a great sound. The two songs I managed to videotape were both fairly short but wonderfully put together, tight with good dynamics and transitions and tasty leads sprinkled through them.


Finally Tomten took the stage for the headlining set.
Tomten mostly used a power trio plus keyboards lineup, with the keyboard player singing lead vocals.
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On some songs the lead vocalist/keyboard player picked up an acoustic guitar instead:
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Either way they had nice songs with strong lead vocals and catchy hooks; this number with the lead vocalist playing the keyboards was well put together:

This one with the acoustic guitar had a nice sweet intro followed by a harder groove as the song gets going; they switched back to the nicer sound for the vocals and moved back and forth through the song, very interesting composition.


Another great show at the Vera Project, three good guitar oriented bands (probably the approach that I favor the most due to my teen years) and a great hooky pop/rock headliner finishing it off, four bands worth of pure musical pleasure. Glad I made it!

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