I’ve only entered a bar completely silenced in front of a television twice in the last five years.
The first time was at a King Khan and BBQ Show set this past November. The opening act tepidly set up and played to an empty floor as all TVs turned to a live feed of the shootings in Paris. The first thought was naturally to leave, doctor to fear immediate surroundings like all terrorists want, to Facetime all my friends in Europe just to see their faces. My second thought was to stay, to dance like hell to pastiche-heavy garage rock in a way that the Bataclan got robbed of. I went with my second thought.
Sunday night thankfully did not carry the same mortal weight, but a similar stomach plunge came about as the room remained transfixed to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on TV, both trading fiercer barbs above ticker tape updates of the bullet-proof Trump campaign. A dulled version of those thoughts in November, the need to be both far away and present, were revisited. Thankfully, a bill as ethereally powerful as Circuit des Yeux and Julia Holter had the ability to extinguish such thoughts for a few hours.
Haley Fohr revealed a divide between herself and her music as Circuit des Yeux within the first few moments of her set. “I don’t really give a shit about these next few songs,” Fohr said in complete deadpan, alluding to a cover she was going to duet with Holter to end her set later. The funnier thing is that her songs are the furthest thing from “don’t give a shit” music as one could get. Circuit des Yeux’s most recent LP, 2015’s In Plain Speech, takes hints of Appalachian folk guitar work, drags it through distortion and looping, and leaves it at the mercy of Fohr’s vocals, which could be huskily crooning, wailing, or operatically climbing the stage pipes at any turn. Longer songs like set highlight “A Story of This World” is an exercise in all three, leaving the room in a meditative stupor as the aforementioned cover of Lucinda Williams’s “Fruits of My Labor” returned the Great Scott crowd back to its bodies.
Where Circuit des Yeux played as viscerally as a musician could with a crowd’s sense of lucidity, Julia Holter offered her layered lyricism and weaving instrumentation as a means of escape. Sunday’s performance marked Holter’s first appearance in Boston since releasing last year’s Have You In My Wilderness and, furthermore, three years since her last visit to a Boston stage. The long wait could be blamed for Great Scott being packed to the rafters for her set, but Wilderness’s place as Holter’s most critically acclaimed and accessible record yet was definitely felt.
The flow from set opener, “Silhouette”, into Loud City Song single “Horns Surrounding Me” felt seamless in the care of Holter’s band, comprised of violinist/singer Dina Maccabee, upright bassist Devin Hoff, and percussionist Corey Fogel, who assisted Holter in rearranging the set as a stripped down, but never bare affair.
Older inclusions like Tragedy’s “Goddess Eyes” received a beefed up live treatment (although the vocoder throughout was slightly missed), while newer fan favorites like “Betsy On The Roof” remained as emotionally draining as on record.
Holter herself was in positive spirits, adding to Fogel’s spot-on impression from behind the kit of Bernie Sanders. “Right now, from where I am, I can only see both their hands shaking in the air,” she added, mimicking the elevated hand gestures. The room was almost entirely focused on Julia Holter’s impression though, the debate temporarily as distant as Bernie or Hillary’s hands from the stage. Closing on a cover of Dionne Warwick’s anthem of female acceptance “Don’t Make Me Over” and Wilderness’s own independence song “Sea Calls Me Home”, Holter proved that her cast of lyrical characters, ambiguously living between fiction and non-fiction, could provide some hope to a silenced Great Scott.
For photos from the show, check out our slideshow below.
