Old and New

On Wednesday, I headed to the Great Hall for a mid-week show. First up was Moscow Apartment. These two young women (both approximately 15-17 years old) did a nice set of guitar and vocal harmonies with both taking turn on lead. I was impressed that their songs were mostly not love songs. They sang about body image and little vignettes about cats, plants, and best friends. This is something musicians with years more experience can't manage. The over-representation of banal love songs in most shows I go to bore me to tears. The audience probably felt old since their natural banter used modern references that escaped most people. Even their covers, Radiator Hospital's Cut Your Bangs and Big Thief's Paul, were too obscure for us fuddy-duddies.

It was a large band that backed Ben Caplan. Although he did include some older material, the set was mostly about the songs off his upcoming album Old Stock. These came from an off-Broadway play he collaborated on about the immigrant experience. You come to a Caplan show for the maniacal energy and verbose lyrics. Of the new music, Widow Bride impressed me the most, a sly metaphor on the colonial narrative that North America was "virgin land". All the musicians were supremely talented but Taryn Kawaja (vocals, melodica, alto sax) brings something special to the show.