Going into this show I wasn’t too sure what to expect from the artists since they all had such diverse styles and came from different genres.

When Margaret Glaspy started her set after Sister Wife with my personal favorite song, “Emotions and Math, I knew it was going to be great.

The way that the stage was set up made everyone in the room feel relaxed. Glaspy and her current guitarist Julian Lage, were both seated in the middle of the stage with nothing but their guitars around them.

The mess of the instruments for the following band, Wye Oak, were halfway covered up, making the setting more casual and less like a huge theater.

Pair the intimate setting with Glaspy’s grungy yet meaningful lyrics and rock guitar, and everyone is in for a treat. The show lasted about an hour, but I could have easily sat there for the rest of the night listening to Glaspy effortlessly float from song to song.

I have a hard time describing what her voice sounds like exactly because there isn’t one person that I can compare her to.

Pitchfork describes her voice as a “nasally warble” but that would turn me away from her music, and I think that more people need to be turned onto it.

The singer-songwriter is a great lyricist, and in the intimate setting of the Englert, we are reminded of this. She has the sort of voice that makes you feel experiences you’ve never been through.

Though a lot of her music is relatable with not all of them being about a breakup or mushy love songs. “Somebody to Anybody” and “Before We Were Together” (which is from her new EP) are just two that come to mind.

Margaret Glaspy and Julien Lage compliment each other perfectly on their guitars, with Glaspy on electric and Lage on steel (mostly).

At one point in the show, Glaspy hands her guitar to Lage and they break into a few songs from the band they are in together called Rude Ruth.

It wasn’t the grungy simple rock that we were used to hearing from her but sounded just as good and I was glad to get a taste of more music of hers.

Like I said earlier, Glaspy has a new EP out featuring three great songs that sounded great live.

“One Heart and Two Arms” sounded off at times, but it was deliberate. After listening to it closer on Spotify, I realized that it’s subtle.

That’s another great thing about Margaret Glaspy, she puts on a great live show- from guitar playing to singing you know exactly what you are going to get, and it’s going to be good.

The post Mission Creek Festival: Margaret Glaspy @ The Englert 4/6/18 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes is a rock band hailing from Nashville, Tennessee. Their sound is raucous and gritty; their latest effort, a five song EP entitled “Bemidji,” fits that form with an emotionally charged rock balladry that lasts a deceiving 22 minutes.

The opening track, “Always/Never” was a perfect way to start this EP. With a tight drum beat that gets you grooving in the first few moments laid over a catchy distorted guitar riff, Daniel Ellsworth and the gang are really letting you know what you’re in for: you’re going to dance, you’re going to sing, and you’ll maybe even roll the windows down, screaming something melodramatic about love or freedom or graduating high school as you quickly drive away from your small hometown and into the big world.

The music video for this song is hilarious, and definitely worth a watch. Lyrically, we find our nominal troubadour battling with the classic qualms of unrequited love: “You don’t love me, no / I’m gonna make you mine.” The lyrical advances made by the group are the weakest part of the record, but this track sends us nicely into the next one.

After the peppy “things will be okay in the end” vibe from the first track, Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes drop us into a dirtier place. The track opens with a dark, brooding soundscape, but only for a few moments before we’re rescued by what could possibly be the most intense song on the EP.

“Get Mine” was named well; it feels like the singer put on some cool sunglasses and decided today was his day. It’s got a driving force behind it, a downbeat-heavy rhythm coupled by all the guitar riff-age you’d ever need to satisfy classic rock fans. “Get Mine” is a four and a half minute piece that keeps you interested the whole time; this seems to be a trend for this record, as even when I thought I was getting bored of a song, they’d change something up or kick it back in with a manner of confidence.

There is so much power packed into each song, one wonders what this would have sounded like if it were created as a full length album, top to bottom. Can this energy last?

A sense of connectedness starts to come together with the addition of the next track. “Like Clockwork” shows us the sensual side of this group–however big, small, and active it may be, it is here, giving us a little bit of low-light rock music. Light falsetto lines are straining on the singer’s voice, but he hits them perfectly. The song picks up in the middle, providing the listener with those little surprises that really draw you through the record. At some point near the end, the snare drum is rolling as the vocals are still coming, and the whole band comes together in a clamor that suddenly drops; the song is over.

The final two songs on this record are the longest, and possibly the most meaningful. “The Surface” takes us to a place we haven’t been to yet on this EP; light piano notes open up the track, leading into a complicated and catchy rhythm that is almost completely carried by the drummer on his ride cymbal. This rhythm comes back a few times in the song at perfects moments, including the very end, really giving us a sense of completeness while the lyrics contradict that sense.

The next song is where I hit a wall; by the time “The Line” was halfway over, I was tired of the hearing the same things I’d been hearing this whole EP, even with the surprises. The song definitely has its moments with a pretty piano intro, impassioned lyrics, and even a jam session at the end, but the buzz the other songs had created was cooling off by then.

I enjoyed listening to the EP, and I think most any fan of modern rock music would also get a kick out of it. This band isn’t doing anything new, but they don’t really need to. They’re a talented group in a genre crowded with many great bands, and if they want to carve out their spot on rock music, they might have to bring some bigger ideas to fill up the enormous sonic space they create.

Favorite Track: “The Surface”

You can purchase the EP on iTunes, listen to it on Spotify, and even listen to some older songs straight from their website.

The post Album Review: “Bemidji” by Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes appeared first on KRUI Radio.