Photos by Ty Hyten
“NICE Job! Congrats!!!” read a piece of tape on the stage, marking the placement of Amelia Meath’s water bottle. Since her and partner Nick Sanborn’s last Denver appearance, the Durham indie electronic pop duo Sylvan Esso managed to move from The Ogden to a sold-out show at Red Rocks last Wednesday.
The crowd was largely hip twenty-somethings and the atmosphere felt more music festival than Wednesday night show. As opener Hippo Campus played their iteration of the African tinted pop-rock that Vampire Weekend made accessible, girls danced and sang along excitedly. They played a decently long set of tight, smoothly sung music that felt at home in the warm summer air that was even more full of weed smoke than usual.
Through a thick fog, Meath and Sanborn walked out onto the stage to the collection of electronic tinkering and muffled vocals of “Sound,” the first track on last year’s What Now. The stage was bathed in large diverging blades of light. Sanborn manned a small collection of wires, knobs, and pads and Meath, dressed in what looked to be a bathing suit bottoms covered with clear plastic poncho style pants, was armed only with a bejeweled microphone.
Sparse hums, zips, bass hits and digital snares gave room for Meath’s distinctive voice, which was as flawless live as in the studio. Despite the digital swirl of the backing music, Meath’s voice was clean of autotune and effects, and unaffected by her gyrating, jumping, and dancing with arms in the air. Sanborn grinded it out, actively modulating sounds and triggering fat bass lines.
The set was representative of both of their full length albums with the addition of new single “PARAD(w/m)E” and “Jaime’s Song,” which was produced for WNYC’s Radiolab. Of course, their breakout hits “Hey Mami” and “Coffee” got enormous responses, but newer songs like “Die Young” and “Radio” also got the dancey crowd animated. Meath also had the large crowd literally howling at the moon in unison before a very good “Wolf.”
The show stopped shy of aggressive lasers and gimmicks like projections on the rocks, but the crowd was illuminated in all sorts of moving colors that contrasted nearly ten thousand moving bodies beautifully with the giant red rocks that they bounced between, painting a beautiful scene.
The duo genuinely surprised me with the energy level they were able to extract from Red Rocks and delivered a sonically sound performance worth seeking out again. The evening ended with a three song encore, beginning with the tender “Slack Jaw,” moving to “Rewind,” and ending on “Play It Right.”
+ There are no comments
Add yours