Mini Sea Wolf Review

Please don’t anticipate one of those objective observer sort of reviews, ‘cause I’m no music expert in general, and I’m obviously completely in love with Sea Wolf. This is going to be one of those someone who has no idea what she’s talking about beyond what works in a given moment sort of reviews.

I really wanted to also fall in love with the local opener Walk Sophie. Well, not in love like that- those boys didn’t look out of high school- but the first two songs blew me away. I tend to be partial to a side of violin and/or cello with my standard lineup folkrock pop, so I was completely satisfied with the driving guitars and basic drum line + vocals and violin, even though I technical difficulty-couldn’t-hear-the-keyboards for the first song and greater minds than mine thought they needed a bass player. Everything seemed to come together during the second song, and the room seemed collectively impressed. And then…. they lost me. It wasn’t bad, but even though I wanted to love them, I found myself drifting, with everyone else old enough to buy liquor who weren’t somebody’s parents (goodness it’s been a while since I was at an all ages show), over to conversation at the bar.

I really enjoyed Brooklyn based The Jealous Girlfriends, who, despite giving me the sensation of having lunch with a charming but schizophrenic third cousin who keeps dripping tea down her blouse and finally throws her silverware, fueled my own personal Redbull inspired dance dance revolution. I’ve heard them classified as “post punk experimental shoegaze,” and during this show summed up as “Sonic Youth meets The Stars meets The Pretenders,” so I’d say my vibe is fairly on point. The Jealous Girlfriends themselves say [via the deli] ““Basically we all sabotage the hell out of each others songs and that’s how we end up sounding the way we do.” In others words, it totally and completely worked.

mp3 The Jealous Girlfriends “Something in the Water”

Poster by John Vogl of course.

And then came what I giddily referred to as “Sea Wolf time!” (If you’ll please recall, I did have a Redbull to contend with.) Jealous Girlfriends had already been forced to coax the polite audience closer to stage, but during the break we all drifted backwards again, putting me in the front.  I honestly don’t remember precisely which song Sea Wolf played first, although I want to say it was “Ses Monuments” from last year’s EP Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low. What I do remember is Alex Brown Church telling everyone to come closer, especially for the next song, which maneuvered me about three feet away from him for the first notes of “The Cold, the Dark, and the Silence.”  Now, I don’t get particularly star struck, but I found standing that close to a performer’s head when he or she performs something that I’m used to consuming in own personal dark and silence, while he or she gazes deeply into my eyes, since, presumably, there’s no where else to gaze at that point, to be a wee bit uncomfortable.   It made for a wonderful show, but after about 4 songs of wondering where to focus my eyes, I gave up and found myself trying to move back just a bit for heaven’s sake, ending up by the elbow of the bass player, but never mind.  There’s something to be said for intimate venues.

I’ve heard Sea Wolf described as having a Russian gypsy flavor, and I get that, but I think it’s more Celtic. There was a lot of tartan on stage to my amusement.  The stand out song of the evening for me was the most Celtic in my mind, “I Made a Resolution,” also from the EP, which I was hoping to hear live.  It’s stellar on the recording, and was positively on fire in person, with more force, maybe even some good old fashioned rocking out.  The played all my other favorites, including “Black Leaf Falls,” “The Rose Captain,” and “Leaves in the River.”  I found “You’re a Wolf” to be, while enjoyable, less than inspired, but perhaps that’s only because I’m rather sick of it; someone in the audience called out “Thank you, I needed to hear that song tonight!” so there you have it.  The only new song (I think) was “Song of the Magpie,” written for Augsten Burrough’s audio edition of A Wolf at the Table.

mp3 Sea Wolf “I Made a Resolution”

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