I wasn’t sure what to expect from opening artist Gallant; I hadn’t sampled his music before the show, but was confident that an opening slot on a Sufjan Stevens’ tour was already a testament to his ability. I wasn’t wrong—the young R&B singer (23) had an incredible falsetto and exuded a great deal of confidence as he strutted across the stage, microphone in hand. Gallant started with a stripped-down soulful rendition of Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly,” and continued to serve up radiant R&B gems, song after song. I found myself thinking “He can’t possibly sing any higher than that,” and was consistently proven wrong right up until the end of the set. His ability was obvious, but to precede a set from Sufjan Stevens—especially a performance as emotionally ravaging as Carrie & Lowell—with R&B-tinged pop music seemed strangely out of place. Maybe Sufjan’s strategy was to raise spirits as high as possible before crushing us all with tragedy, loss, and despair. Who knows?

Before jumping right into Carrie & Lowell, Stevens sat stoically behind a piano and delivered the ebbing chords of “Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)” to the nearly sold out Mainstage Theatre. The swirling vocal harmonies of the lyric-less number filled the room beautifully and dutifully introduced the chilling tone of C&L. “Death With Dignity” followed a seamless (and applauseless) transition, Stevens standing center-stage to sing the opening track. A number of large candle-shaped LCD screens served as the stage’s backdrop, playing old home videos of Stevens and family throughout the song. The juxtaposition really highlighted the personal nature of the album and did well to bring an unbridled emotion to the forefront of every song.

Stevens and company then completely immersed themselves in the rest of the album (in its entirety), ironically giving each song a living, breathing pulse. The transformative nature of the studio takes to the live performances was nothing short of breathtaking; I was really blown away by how such delicate songs could be made so incredibly powerful onstage. “Fourth of July” was particularly well-done; the ambient piano sounds were accompanied by a brooding, full-band crawl that added to the song’s haunting atmosphere considerably. The extended ending swelled with rising instrumentation as Sufjan and his crew repeated the album’s most iconic lyrical motif in stunning harmony—“We’re all gonna die.” No exaggeration—“Fourth of July” was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard performed in a live setting.

After performing most of Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan ran through a couple songs from 2010’s The Age of Adz, including an intense 10-12 minute instrumental interlude after “I Want to Be Well.” Eventually the intensity waned, but not before tip-toeing the fine line between prowess and self-indulgence. The display was undoubtedly impressive, but in my opinion, mostly unnecessary. Sufjan Stevens then brought the feels back one last time for the final track of C&L, “Blue Bucket of Gold,” again filling the theater with swirling layers of ambient piano tones and chilling harmonies.

Encoring with some crowd-pleasing older material including “John Wayne Gacy Jr,” “Casmir Pulaski Day,” and an excellent rendition of “Chicago,” which fell somewhere between The Avalanche’s acoustic and adult contemporary versions, Sufjan thanked the crowd for being a part of his grieving process. “Performing these songs, it’s full immersion into my misery—and then I offer that to you; it’s a beautiful thing. Thank you.” And the man was right; there was something very special about his performance that night, not just for himself, or me, but for everyone in attendance. To bring that misery to song and perform it for the masses is commendable to say the very least, and his performance on Friday will go down markedly as one of (if not the) best of the year.

Setlist

“Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)”
“Death With Dignity”
“Should Have Known Better”
“Drawn to the Blood”
“Eugene”
“John My Beloved”
“The Only Thing”
“Fourth of July”
“No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”
“Carrie & Lowell”
“All of Me Wants All of You”
“The Owl and the Tanager”
“Vesuvius”
“I Want to Be Well”
“Blue Bucket of Gold”

Encore

“Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois”
“For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti”
“John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”
“Casmir Pulaski Day”
“Chicago (Acoustic Version)”

The post Sufjan Stevens at UB’s Center for the Arts (10/30/15) first appeared on buffaBLOG.

The post Tonight: Sufjan Stevens first appeared on buffaBLOG.

This fall, he will once again take Carrie & Lowell on the road, this time including Buffalo on his latest itinerary. On Friday, Ocotober 30th, Stevens will perform in the Mainstage Theater at UB’s Center for the Arts, his first area performance since his magically bonkers holiday show at Asbury Hall a couple years back.

Tickets will go on sale Friday, July 24th at 10am for $43.50. A portion of all ticket sales will go towards Stevens’ Plus One charity organization.

The post Just Announced: Sufjan Stevens first appeared on buffaBLOG.

With an extensive songbook spanning decades of musical genres and pop references, the show was not only a culmination of Weird Al’s career, but also a two and a half hour history lesson of our modern culture—from Jeopardy to Forrest Gump to eBay. And like many artists who have too many hits to play, songs would run into one another in long, tightly choreographed bursts. Hearing both his old and new songs in succession like this truly highlighted how his satire works—he captures not only popular songs of the times, but also our mindsets during those times. It was telling that two of his most recent songs, “Party in the CIA” and “Foil,” deal with our justifiable paranoia about privacy in a digital age.

But when it came to his new hits and biggest classics, he gave each the special treatment. He had the hat, beard, and butter churning moves for “Amish Paradise,” he had the Robin Thicke/Beetlejuice suit for “War Crimes,” and when it came time for the legendary “Fat,” he broke the record for the shortest amount of time to get into a full body suit and make up. My personal favorite was when Al, in a puffy white shirt lit by candlelight, sang an acoustic version of “Eat It” with Unplugged “Layla”-style guitar strumming. Audiences only needed a note before chiming in with every lyric, whether from his recent viral video rollout or a classic cut like “Another One Rides the Bus.” For the finale, I was screaming along to “Yoda” as if it was the Kinks singing about Star Wars.  Were we all part of a larger parody, acting out the rituals of a concert? All I can say is when Weird Al held up his accordion for the first time, like Jimmy Page with a double neck guitar, and the bright lights amplified with the crowd’s scream, it certainly didn’t feel like a joke.

In a culture where there is shame in being mainstream, it’s fair to ask after playing a sold-out show off a number one album: Is Weird Al still weird? Well for me personally, the weirdest part of the show occurred when Al was jamming out a polka-pounding version of “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk. My ass had begun to move. It found the beat from my chair and had begun to sway, genuinely and without irony.

The post Werid Al at UB’s Center for the Arts (7/15/15) first appeared on buffaBLOG.

Coming off the huge success of his latest album, Mandatory Fun, Weird Al will play the Mainstage Theater at UB’s Center for the Arts for a sold out show tonight. He has always had a dedicated following here, and with Weird Al’s career reaching his arguably biggest high yet (winning a Grammy and having a Top 40 single for the 4^th decade in a row!), it should be an outstanding, fantastical, polka-fueled good time. Music begins at 7:30pm.

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Toronto-based girl-pop group Alvvays opened the show promptly at 8pm (the CFA doesn’t mess around when it comes to start times), kicking things off with “Adult Diversion,” the opening track off of the group’s excellent 2014 self-titled debut. For reasons unknown (I’m lazy, I admit it), I was reluctant to check this band out when fellow buffaBLOGGER Nick Sessanna so highly recommended them to me back when their album dropped, but I finally picked it up this January. Since then, Alvvays has become one of my favorite new bands. (Nick: I hereby entitle you to one “I told you so.”) All ten tracks are gems, highlighted by Molly Rankin’s heavenly voice of “innocence and glassy-eyed indifference,” as Sessanna so aptly describes it here.

Highlights of their live set included the riffing high energy of “Next of Kin,” the trouble-melting dream state of “Ones Who Love You,” and “Dives”, my personal favorite, during which Rankin and keyboardist Kerri MacLellan delivered some truly angelic vocal harmonies over the song’s hypnotizing stroll. Predictably closing their set with 2014’s indie summer anthem “Archie, Marry Me,” Alvvays thanked the crowd and disappeared backstage.

Met with an uproar of admiration, Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy walked to the front of the stage, in all his scholarly glory, armed with his acoustic guitar. Without hesitation, he began strumming the familiar chord progression to “The Singer Addresses His Audience,” the opening track of the band’s honed-in new album, What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World.

“We know, we know we belong to ya” sings Meloy, seemingly staring into the eyes of his audience in an effort to assert the authenticity of his lyrics. “And the hopes that we wouldn’t change / but we had to change some / you know, to belong to you.”

The full band continued through a lengthy WATWWABW-heavy set, including “Cavalry Captain,” “Anti-Summersong,” “Carolina Low,” and “A Beginning Song,” with which they closed out their set fantastically. “Make You Better,” the new album’s first single, was also particularly well-done—Meloy’s impressive vocal stylings swirled effortlessly through harmonies in the song’s grandiose choruses. I’ve enjoyed their new album since it came out this January, but what I truly craved to hear live was some Picturesque / The Crane Wife era material, most of which was sorely omitted from the night’s setlist. I suppose with a discography as extensive as The Decemberists’, the band can play only so many songs in an evening’s time.

Yet, the setlist wasn’t completely void of older material. The band ripped through some legacy-Decemberist favorites including “Grace Cathedral Hill,” “Los Angeles, I’m Yours,” and “16 Military Wives.” The crowd’s reception to the older material seemed to be pretty mixed, some fans bobbing their heads, waiting patiently for the next song, while others were singing every word right along with Meloy and company. Special props goes out to the couple in the fourth or fifth row who remained standing in stoic support throughout the majority of the set, despite the 1700 or so other individuals who stayed glued to their seats.

“Sure, we’ve got time to play a couple more for you.” said Meloy after returning onstage for the band’s encore at the obvious request of the adoring crowd. The first song of the two-song encore, “12-17-12,” was played beautifully, and met accordingly with a thunderous applause from the crowd, whom were all standing at this point. The song was written in dedication to the tragic events at Sandy Hook, and having it played live served as a tender reminder that gave me—and I’m sure I’m not alone on this one—some serious feels. The Decemberists’ final song of the night, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” proved to be their most theatric, as the band was joined by a stage-hand operated giant whale prop that proceeded to “eat” the band as the audience screamed in participation, as per Meloy’s request. The encore, in typical Decemberists fashion, left the audience in high spirits, feeling as though we’d contributed something special to the evening. Suddenly, as the band is walking off stage, Meloy’s lyrics make perfect sense: “And we did it for you / we did it all for you.”

Setlist:
“The Singer Addresses His Audience”
“Cavalry Captain” 
“Down by the Water”
“Calamity Song”
“Grace Cathedral Hill”
“Anti-Summersong”
“Make You Better”
“The Wrong Year”
“The Island: Come and See” / “The Landlord’s Daughter” / “You’ll Not Feel the Drowning”
“Los Angeles, I’m Yours”
“Carolina Low”
“A Bower Scene”
“Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)”
“The Rake’s Song”
“16 Military Wives”
“Dracula’s Daughter / “O Valencia!”
“A Beginning Song”

Encore:
“12/17/12”
“The Mariner’s Revenge Song”

The post The Decemberists w/ Alvvays @ UB’s Center for the Arts (4/1/15) first appeared on buffaBLOG.

Alvvays excels at swimmy, reverb-laden tracks that have more in common with the beach than their snowy hometown of Toronto. Nevertheless, the group’s self-titled debut was highly praised, having made many best-of 2014 lists. Singer Molly Rankin is a true delight – her voice a combination of innocence (a la fellow v-ers CHVRCHES) and mature, glassy-eyed indifference. Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard called lead single, “Archie, Marry Me,” his favorite song of the year (but the verdict is still out on whether Ben and Decemberists singer Colin Meloy are actually doppelgangers).

Unfortunately for those of you who don’t have tickets, tonight’s performance is sold out, but you can still enjoy a snippet of their music below. For those who do, Alvvays takes the stage at 8pm.

The post Alvvays first appeared on buffaBLOG.

UB, who frequently seemed a tad out of touch on many of its Fall/Spring Fest acts, took a major step in the right direction with last year’s Kendrick Lamar show, although I am still waiting for them to top that Outkast Spring Fest when I was in high school. The multi-band show will once again take place at Baird Point at the North Campus, even though it seemingly gets rained out every year. If that tradition continues, be prepared to watch this show in Alumni Arena.

Tickets go on sale on Wednesday, April 1st, beginning at 10am. UB students with a valid student ID get a ticket for free (that student activity fee is working hard on this one). As for non-UB students? $40.

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