Cate Le Bon is from the future.

Opening act, 28 Degrees Taurus, a modest duo of drum and guitar, took the future in stride with their self-named brand of music: ambient rock. This ambience- a dream/psych sound, was best felt through their opening number, which started with a loop of the swishing sound of waves moving up and down the shore. When the duo came in with crashing cymbal and interstellar notes on guitar, it felt a bit like traveling in space. When the chorus hit, the two sang in harmony, “I wanna feel something magical”; it was clear that they were, in fact, shooting for the stars, something greater than ourselves in the final frontier.

Kevin Morby has already taken part in two fantastic musical ventures: as a bassist in psych folk rock band Woods, and as a co-star with Vivian Girls Cassie Ramone in The Babies. This past November, he released his debut solo record, Harlem River, via Woodsist. While one might have hoped to hear him really let loose- as he has proven capable of with both of the aforementioned bands- he was unfortunately relegated to a stripped down set, playing with one other guitar for two songs, before sitting in a chair and folding his legs over in front of a lone microphone (He did, however, play a solo version of “Wandering” from The Babies). Disappointment for what could have been aside, Morby proved why he’s already seen so much success; his capabilities as a nascent singer/songwriter felt like pure natural talent. His slightly nasal tone produced a simple, heart wrenching sound, and his guitar plucking was rhythmically consistent- he made easy-going folk rock look easy.

In a time, especially for relative youths like himself, when we are often over stimulated, Morby’s honest, straightforward wonderings, “And I don’t know/and I-I-I don’t know/ just where I’m going/or where I’ve been” combined with his highly digestible guitar writing- to the tune of a ponderous, cloud-shrouded sunrise- evoked a worthy trope: having no clue what’s happening or where you’re going to end up, and feeling sad and sorry (“all that evil I came upon”) about it. Indeed, the solo performance allowed for primary focus on this pre-nostalgic feeling of restless youth: “If you knew, just how far, I traveled/ then, maybe then, maybe then”. He has, apparently, come a long way to get to this point, “Miles, Miles, Miles,” in fact. However, his collision with death, shared in the final song- a ghostly stroll titled “The Dead They Don’t Come Back”- revealed the most pressurized coming-of-age disclosure: I am going to die. Walking through a cemetery, he understands that we can only “measure the distance in time”. It’s not for Morby to understand where he’s been, or where he’s going- not right now at least- he needs more future to work with before he pieces together a complete retrospective.

Cate Le Bon is capable of premonition. Her style looked the part: sporting a glittery loose gold sleeve, with a boyish, pre-sexualized bowl cut, she stood with an almost alien, brain-washed stare (a la fembot from Austin Powers), poised to direct the mere earthlings in front of her. Her opening number began with a stately bass and drum kick- add a cute, bubblegum guitar line on top, and the pop dynamic of Le Bon was felt immediately; however, introducing recurrent polyps- clumsy guitar rolling down a hill, with light psych piano occasionally joining in, she gave the first signs of what would become, in the rest of the set, her hauntingly psychedelic, hybrid folk rock sound. When she finally shared the lyric, “No God”, it was clear what we were receiving: a message from a quasi space princess. She followed with, “Are You With Me Now?” a hit from her most recent record, Mug Museum. It wasn’t hard, then, to grasp the crux of her craft: there’s “no god… are you with me now?” Indeed, this post Copernican revelation is the spine of her particular breed of music. Whereas 28 Degrees Taurus wants to play around in space, and Morby wants to sit in the soil and think, Le Bon has reached a different point in her artistic arc, combining the beauty and horror of nature/society to produce the most coherent music of the night.

While Le Bon sees brilliance in the living- felt through the endorphin-releasing pings of her guitar, and the softness of her high falsetto calls- she made it clear, through the dissonance of clunky, tripped out piano chords, and buzzing psych guitar riffs, that we are living in strange times. There is a bizarre quality to this juxtaposition, as if she’s the proprietor of a haunted house; she’s a comedian (she played the recorder for one song!), a near cynic. She really opened the door to this carnival mad house in the song “Wild”, which introduced itself with a combination of crazy guitar punches and demented piano chords. Just before she hit the chorus, Le Bon shared some pre-linguistic ahhhs and oooos- a creepy enhancement to the theme park- before wailing, “Wiiild, Wiiild!” “Fold the Cloth” one of her last songs, had a stronger blend of pop, with a tad less dissonance in the piano and guitar but still a ghostly, falsetto from the joker, who eventually opened up to remind us of her psych rock chops. When the jam stopped, she quietly added, “Fold the cloth/or cut the cloth off”, before jumping right back into instrumental experimentation. For Le Bon, you can either fold your clothes to fit back in the dresser- commit yourself to the depressing cycle that is life’s hopeless durability- or cut them off completely, grab a spacesuit and a new haircut, and, well, who knows…

The only disappointment of the show was the absence of “Slow Train” from Morby’s, Harlem River- the track best captures the essence of his thought process and features vocals from Le Bon.