It’s never easy to select where to go during CMJ Music Marathon, the nearly week long event that draws hundreds of bands to New York City for a chance to play in front of industry professionals, music tastemakers, bloggers and their friends. Hopefully anyone really. Given the number of venues to choose from, I decided to hedge my bets and go to the BalconyTV Showcase at Webster Hall, an event I attended last year, so that I could also check out bands downstairs in the Studio while bands were swapping out on the former stage. Below are the acts I caught, as well as pics from Christopher Paul Stelling’s set at Rockwood as I had wanted to end my night on a strong show.
Evvy is a home town girl with indie-pop sensibilities. Her songs are dreamy and charming from what I gathered via the available streams (a standout I found was “Calling”). But I arrived a bit late to see her whole set and, from the portion of what I saw, Evvy was catchy but not concise. The songs seemed too long to be poppy (the hooks didn’t sink) while not being strong enough with dance elements to be clubby. Still, as a new artist, Evvy shows a lot of promise and will likely hone her act for the road.
Stone Cold Fox are another home town act, hailing from across the East River in Brooklyn, and play a strong mix of rock.
I wandered down to the Studio during a change up upstairs and was pleased to hear music from Sebastian Mikael as he played a mix of R&B and soul tunes, a genre under represented at CMJ. I arrived to find him beginning a seductive version of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love”, before he went into his own song “Last Night” (which features Wale on the original). Mikael noted the song meant a lot to him and he also invited the crowd to come in closer to the stage — a moment later, a lot of ladies were at his feet.
Spirit Animal is a band I had seen before but I hadn’t seem them listed as part of the showcase ahead of time. So I was pleasantly surprised by the familiar actions of wild front man Steve Cooper. Basically the moment I had come back into the room, he hopped off stage into the crowd. By this point, the upstairs room had attracted more people so it was cool to see the crowd feeding off his energy. “Black Jack White” was a standout.
I didn’t know what to expect when I went back downstairs and found a group of seven musicians on stage whose average age seemed to be around nineteen. The crowd’s average may have been heavily skewed for a regular CMJ show as, presumably, the band’s parents and young friends were in the crowd. But Lawrence were more spirited and soulful than I could have imagined and I decided to linger for their entire seven song stretch. The group is fronted by Clyde and Gracie Lawrence — while both sing, the former also is the keyboardist while the latter is their powerhouse vocalist. That the band has a horn section (trumpet and sax) only made their blend of rock, R&B and funk more appealing to me. A pleasant, surprise find, I would definitely see Lawrence again.
Without a drummer for the evening unfortunately, Alex Winston still managed to put on a strong danceable show. She appeared very chipper, smiling even as she sang songs with titles like “The Day I Died”. Her voice can convey a lot of passion, as she proved on the strongest song (that I saw). Winston introduced it as her favorite track off a forthcoming album (due in spring) and “Down Low” was stirring (though sometimes her voice was subsumed by the voluminous music).
I had seen Christopher Paul Stelling at Newport Folk Festival earlier this year and again later in the summer at The Living Room in Brooklyn. He is a strong singer-songwriter whose release, Labor Against Waste has earned him strong reviews if not sell out crowds. While he usually plays without a backing band (his fiancee Julia Christgau provides backing vocals), when I saw his Living Room show he did have a full band. I can’t complain that this Rockwood show didn’t have the band for two reasons. One, I wasn’t even aware Stelling was part of CMJ this year, but as he said during his performance, he somehow manages to get sucked into it every year. Two, Stelling did invite his violinist friend Kieran Ledwidge to join him and Ledwidge is outstanding from what I saw both last night (and at Living Room). On “Brick x Brick”, Ledwidge’s playing reminded me of the theme from Tetris. But it is Stelling who is the star on stage, as he demonstrates tremendous dedication to his craft. He plays with a steel core of resolve, similar to the intensity Glen Hansard possesses, and in between he shares stories, like one about drinking heavily and then getting kicked out of a German hotel the next morning which led to him visiting a castle (an intro into his next song”Castle”). Definitely an act to watch (he earned Village Voice‘s award for “Best Folk Artist”) Stelling will continue on an extensive tour with West Coast shows but it was great to have him in NYC for just the one night.
