Lucius and You Won’t Warm Hearts At The Sinclair (12/5)

By Nick Canton

lucius

You Won’t opened up for Lucius at the Sinclair last Thursday evening. Punk-country guitar and drums filled the huge stage, and (take note) any band that drops an in-song Back To The Future reference gets an automatic recommendation from me. Their songs and banter were goofy and self-aware. I don’t know if it was what I would call bashful, but it was never cocky, although the show did take some considerable confidence.

So it was just a stupid good time. The vocals were sort of a mix of Dylan and Dee from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The guitar was distorted and hyper, but at times chugging at a folk-ish pace. The drummer kept up with all of the changes and was pushing some buttons on a sampler to add background effect to the main instruments. A set highlight was when this drummer got out a full harmonium (a big accordion-sounding box), the singer/guitarist’s brother joined them on stage, and they sang a hilariously over-the-top drinking ballad called (I assume) “Fuck T.V.”

At this point, one might expect me to say something stupid like “You Won’t? No, I Will!” but I’m not going to.

Let me tell you about Lucius. They had the odds stacked against them from the get-go—having already shot my wad (that’s a blogging term) over Dosh the previous night, I attended this show hungry and having canceled plans I was looking forward to.

I’d “seen” Lucius over the Summer at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, MA. I say “seen” because I missed their actual set for another show, but I had a chance to catch vocalists Jess and Holly in a pop-up set (a very stripped down concert with no microphones or stages in some corner of some building), as well as on stage supporting Wilco both nights they played. Okay, I get it: folk-pop. Endearing, great vocals, matching outfits, I can appreciate it. So I decided to cover this event and see what their actual set consists of.

So I went expecting folk—not exactly in my wheelhouse, but I feel like I’m getting good at the whole appreciating-things-for-what-they-are thing.

But this was some flat out alternative pop. Imagine St. Vincent before she got just a little less melodic and more art-pop, but now she has two vocal lines that are constantly either in harmony or just singing the same note in stereo. So that was the sound we’re dealing with, with all the and peaks and troughs of a Southern revival gospel choir.

The show was incredible: Jess and Holly are still (and will always be) the main event. They’ve got keyboards, forming a V in the center of the stage so they’re each looking across at one half of the audience. There were three other musicians singing at the more built-up moments and playing guitars. Outside of this, the stage looks like a drumset exploded all over, with toms, cymbals, bells, and all sorts of accessories scattered and within reach of each of the five members. The most fun was watching the two stars tambourine or hit toms, while singing and playing blippy keyboard riffs, though if you were focusing on any of the three gentlemen behind them, you would not be disappointed. It was well congealed and felt small or enormous depending on the need. At one point, one of the members of You Won’t actually played a musical saw on stage, which wtf, that’s awesome.
The very end had the singers, a guitar, a tom, and the saw out in the middle of the Sinclair, playing some completely acoustic folky numbers akin to what I had experienced. I’d seen this done before a few times, but never anywhere the size of the Sinclair and never with a band that had as much buzz as this. Because of these details, it seemed like a new experience. And it pretty much always works to warm a few hearts.