Umbrella Tree / Noisycrane / Gospel Gossip, PopFest 2008, Flicker, 8/15/08

Umbrella Tree

by Alexander Dimitropoulos
08/16/2008

If you walked briskly from Little Kings to Flicker, you could have made all the performances at both venues yesterday. I seriously hope that you did.

Where did Umbrella Tree come from? I know it says Nashville on their MySpace page, and the band said they came from Nashville into the microphone, and that information entered my ear and it didn’t process at all. They take three instruments (keyboard, guitar, drums), play them ridiculously tightly and then sing better than you or I, sometimes at a pretty big distance from the microphone. Zachary, the guitarist/bassist and one of two singers, said he has the same name as Zachary Gresham of local band Summer Hymns. He also has a voice that’s a dead ringer for Rufus Wainwright’s, can do some nasty harmonic fretting and had a fun time saying the name to the bands song titles, including “Bats in the Belfry.” Combine those with Jillian’s shy, reserved singing and punchy keyboard playing, and you have minor key romps that brought the house down.

“Everything you heard can be bought,” Gresham said. “It’s a miracle.”

Indeed.

Noisycrane arrived as a six-piece unit from Lexington, Ky., with two drummers, a keyboardist, a violinist and singer/guitarist Cody Swanson. They play some melancholy, dirgeful songs, and even the poppier numbers were tinged with regret (“summer came along and broke your heart,” is a sample opening line). Because they had two drummers, Noisycrane stayed true to their name in spurts. The sound mix wasn’t great, however, which is understandable considering the amount of noise the non-drum instruments needed to compensate for in such a small venue. Swanson’s vocals weren’t always audible, so I suggest visiting the band’s MySpace for a truer representation of his talent. “the dirt in your teeth” sounds like a missing Neutral Milk Hotel song, and “i love you but” comes through like Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. Find both songs here.

God bless Flicker for having wooden chairs with cushions in the concert area. I was exhausted just from watching Gospel Gossip. I expected something bratty and raucous and was only half right. The band showed up as a trio instead of the quartet listed on its MySpace, so I can’t really say what the full band would sound like. Sarah, the lead singer/guitarist, is really the centerpiece of the act, however, and she had plenty of room to belt out her stuff. And while their songs sound little like the Arcade Fire’s, she is the closest I’ve heard to a female version of Win Butler. She sings simple, clever details triumphantly: “She was passed out almost when he asked her to dance. And he was from New York. And doing pre-med just in case,” for example.

She elevates the commonplace to the significance that information would have for the character. And unlike Butler, she doesn’t need a megaphone. Gospel Gossip hit the audience smack in the face with a wall of sound, and Sarah’s foot stomping could be felt through the floor in the third row. She was too out-of-breath for stage banter, and the band’s last song had loads of feedback and the drummer arching away from his kit to do some fast, Joy Division-style hi-hat hitting. Near the end of the song, Sarah ended up on the ground with her legs wrapped around her Stratocaster. She then set it against her amp, let it scream, and then started to beat it with her fist. Gossip is an honest workout.