When Kishi Bashi’s mid-February show at The Sinclair was cancelled in the wake of the dreaded snow storm Nemo, pharm a chorus of sighs erupted across the greater Boston area that was likely audible from the International Space Station. Buried under twenty-nine inches of snow were the effervescent violin and electronic melodies, prescription the operatic voice, and the frenzied joy of Kishi Bashi. Six weeks later, though, on a Tuesday evening in late March, the show blessedly went on.
It was the perfect night for it: a cool and wide-open evening fading in from one of the first truly vernal days of spring. For the first time in a long time, couples, friends, and families walked the streets of Cambridge unsheathed from calf-length parkas, heads no longer bowed against the wind with an unhurried pace. It seemed only appropriate to showcase such wildly happy music. The Sinclair, lovely in spacious intimacy and temperate air, was the ideal setting.
First came Plume Giant, a blissful and drum-tight folk trio from Brooklyn, New York via Yale University, where its three members met. Together Eliza Bagg, Oliver Hill, and Nolan Green balance an entirely comforting sound while maintaining astonishing musical precision. With Bagg on pipe organ and violin, Hill on guitar, and Green on piano and violin, the band switched off instruments and lead vocals throughout the set. Green even took to holding a transcendent piano chord during a song using one bare foot.
It’s Plume Giant’s vocals, though, that send chills down your spine. Hill and Green sing soft, sweet, and soulful. Bagg’s voice is really something special, whether in the background or front and center—rich, creamy, and flawless like a quivering pannacotta. Sometimes they erupt into scat, and while at others they enter into full ballad mode (one such time about an experience in Iowa). The set was—there’s no other word for it–pleasant. “Pleasant,” here used not as a modifier or a minimizer, but as a rare and precious achievement.
Kishi Bashi (real name K. Ishibashi) came onstage precisely at 9:30, lean and rock-star perfect in narrow brown trousers cinched with a large ceramic belt buckle embellished with a painted stag, a black button-up shirt with printed yellow bow tie, and a massive, voluminous, bleached-blonde mohawk. There had been some talk of Ishibashi performing his music alone with violin and synthesizer, as he has done on many radio appearances, but his performances are greatly enhanced by a band. Onstage with him were Elizabeth Simmons on four-top drum, tambourine, and backing vocals and Mike Savino of Tall Tall Trees on banjo. Savino’s banjo is a thing of mystical beauty and mysterious power—but more on that later.
Ishibashi kicked off his set with “Intro: Pathos Pathos,” the first track on his studio album 151A1. It’s a wildly happy song, full of promise and joy. “One day/you and me/again under the tall trees….We’ll both look up in merriment,” crooned Ishibashi into the microphone. The way Ishibashi makes music is a thing to behold. On the spot, Ishibashi creates loop after loop of violin and vocals, allowing them to build into frenzied intensity and warping a few notes along the way. He beatboxes masterfully, then turns the rhythms into layered, complex things of beauty. He is active, engaged, and his voice is enormous—clear as a bell even when he leaps into a soaring high note. Ishibashi took multiple breaks to explore with his violin, and there is no doubt that he is an extremely skilled classical musician, a fact which makes his imaginative beats and experimental structures all the more interesting. In between songs he was sassy and grateful to the audience, apologizing multiple times for the canceled show and cracking little jokes along the way. “I’m in control here!” he muttered to an askew bow tie and a broken violin string that he broke off with his teeth.
Meanwhile, on either side of Ishibashi, Simmons and Savino made waves of their own. Simmons, formerly a backup singer for Enya (she blushes and grins when Ishibashi asks if he can do a cover of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”), beat the hell out of the four-top before her, at one point delivering a death blow for each of the 29 feet dumped on Boston during Nemo, the reviled spoiler of shows. Savino, big-bearded and brightly-tied, expertly played a banjo that’s the stuff of legend: a priceless tooled-out, lit-up, beautiful artifact that is at once a traditional banjo, an electric guitar, a harmonica, a bass guitar, a violin, and even a thumping drum. How he got this instrument to do the things it did is surely wizardry. Watching him use fingers, bow, drumstick, and pick to coax sound out of this thing was both perplexing and wonderful. Savino and Ishibashi were friends at Berklee College of Music, where Ishibashi studied film scoring, and they were often jam buddies. “We were supposed to be in a fusion band together, man,” Ishibashi said before they launched into a brilliant improvised jam session, a display of lasting friendship and easy cohesion.
Ishibashi played every song off of 151A and a few more, including some new songs. Keep an ear out for “Philosophize In It, Chemicalize With It,” a song to be included on Ishibashi’s next EP that started as a forgotten 30-second side project for a Japanese commercial and turned into a full-on dance jam. Highlights included the lilting dream of “Wonder Woman, Wonder Me” and the so-beautiful-it’s-scary “Beat the Bright Out of Me”.
Ishibashi finished the set with “It All Began With A Burst,” an exuberant song punctuated by multiple solo breaks and freestyles. After the set was over Kishi Ishibashi graciously delivered an encore including a song from his previous band Jupiter One, a hilarious and wonderful beat-boxed rap. He finished the evening, inevitably, thankfully, with the transcendence of “Manchester”. The crowd sang along: “I haven’t felt this alive in a long time/All the streets are warm today.”
This was the final show on Kishi Bashi’s latest tour, one so postponed that it took on a feeling of reunion, not weariness. All the performers were happy, grateful to be there, and comfortably communicative with one another after a long tour together. Next, they’ll be hitting Europe, Australia, and Japan where they will surely continue to spread joy wherever they go.
Photo Credit: Marry Pivazian