Live Threads – Reverb: Wye Oak at Larimer Lounge, Saturday, April 2, 2011
April 4, 2011
Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner brought a blues-y heaviness to the Baltimore band's folk rock at the Larimer Lounge last Saturday night. (Photo: Nathan Armes, heyreverb.com)
At the Larimer Lounge on Saturday night, Jenn Wasner mentioned that she and bandmate Andy Stack of the Baltimore band Wye Oak, were tired. And justifiably so, having come from Salt Lake City that day, and in the very beginning of a 10-day stretch of their current tour that travels through the midwest and up into Montreal before they get a night off.
This apparent exhaustion, however, didn’t seem to make any difference in the duo’s performance.
A more valid reason the two should be tired, in fact, was the fury and passion they poured into an hour-long set. Often lumped in with indie or folk rock bands, presumably due to a tendency to alternate between screeching distortion and sparse minimalism on record, the pair was anything but mere folk that night. Wasner wailed meditations on solitude, love and aloneness and masterfully wrangled her guitar, while Stack covered the rest. Stack’s ability to multi-task the entire balance of such a huge sound — playing a trap set with both feet and his right hand while pounding on keyboards for both bass and melody with his left — was stunning to watch.
