7.17.10 - Civil Twilight and The Paper Tongues @ Radio Radio

Saturday night's show at Radio Radio with Civil Twilight and the Paper Tongues was a high energy show filled with new music for us and a crowd that was excited to see a show from a couple of newer acts.

The Paper Tongues started off the show. The band is comprised of 7 members, which is a lot of people to fit onto the tiny stage of Radio Radio, but they made it work well. The band hails from Charlotte, North Carolina and finds a way to blend hip-hop, electronica, and rock. And of course, they have a massive amount of energy that just radiates throughout the crowd. Within the first song, the lead singer, Aswan North (which is probably the coolest name for any lead singer) jumped onto the floor and started shaking hands with people in the audience. It is that approachability and willingness to be a part of the crowd that hears their music that will help them gain success and fans in the future. Also, North has an epic voice, with some influence of perhaps Steve Perry.

Some highlights of the set include songs "Trinity," "Ride To California," and "Everybody." Those were the songs that stuck out to me the most. The music is positive I feel that each band member brings something unique to the sound of the band and they all are very good performers. I enjoyed the positive messages of their songs...it's not cheesy, and it's not overtly Christian in nature, but it just brings the positivity that our world needs. I highly recommend their music

In a completely different direction, the three piece band Civil Twilight came onstage. The 3 band members are brothers Steven and Andrew McKellar and Richard Wouters; all come from Cape Town, South Africa. They recently re-released the album they put out independently. What I enjoyed about this band is that they have a great dramatic sound...this is the music I craved to hear when I lived in a valley in Colorado, surrounded by mountains. They sound similar to Muse and constantly seem to be compared to an early U2 or Coldplay. While I somewhat agree with those comparisons, I think Civil Twilight's music is a bit more progressive.

They opened with "Something She Said," and played most of the songs from their self titled album. One of the songs I enjoyed the most was a song called "Human," which is just well-written and emotional and just a beautiful expression of that thing we all are. Their songs have been featured on shows such as One Tree Hill, Harper's Island, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and House, M.D. One song in particular that I really enjoyed was called "Save Yourself." They did a cover of "Teardrops," by Massive Attack, which was excellent, as well. Overall, the band put on a really good show and made us more interested in their music.

For our first time seeing both of these bands, we were happily surprised by how much we liked their music, though it doesn't exactly fit what we ordinarily listen to. We liked both bands sense of musicianship and the fact that the guitar player from Civil Twilight often played the guitar with a bow was a pretty cool effect we enjoyed and haven't seen much. We had a good time at the show and we walked away from the evening interested in more music that we probably wouldn't have been exposed to if not for seeing live shows such as this one. That's the thing we love to do and part of our mission; although most people only hear about the shows coming to Indy at the State Fair or larger venues such as Conseco, Indy is actually a great place to discover up and coming musicians and has some pretty stellar smaller venues and that's where we like to go.

Sunday, July 18, 2010 Posted in | , , , | 0 Comments »

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