[show review] - EFTERKLANG @ The First Unitarian Church Sanctuary - Philly

A crowd gathered in Philadelphia waits patiently outside a church @ 8:00 pm. The gates open and the mass of bodies flood the entrance way in order to get situated. There is a stage cluttered with instruments: A keyboard, a bass guitar, 2 guitars, a trumpet, a drum kit, a violin, a saw, microphones [plural] and an electronic device with enough wires coming out of it to power an entire city.

The mass of bodies come together to seat 8 per church pew. The lights are dim but not out. The atmosphere is buzzing. Humming with anticipation...



Efterklang - Cutting Ice To Snow [from the album Parades]
Efterklang - Mirror Mirror [live 2008]



Our first entertainer, Peter Broderick takes the stage.



Broderick is 1/7 of Efterklang who has his own thing going for him. At first I didn't think too much of him. He hd a loop machine tucked neatly under his keyboard and used it quite a bit to his advantage. First he would loop some guitar, than some piano, than some violin. Eventually he would sing. His voice is what really kept my attention through out the first few songs. A voice that made the church rise above the clouds that we all once lived under. Each song wow-ed me even more than the last. The loop machine captured a weeping saw crying underneath a delicate guitar. It captured our applause after a song. We heard ourselves in his performance. HE USED US TO MAKE HIS MUSIC! He told a funny story that you couldn't really understand. A story in which he looped himself above and below his own voice. Mumbling and incoherent, yet beautiful in it's own right.

To end his set, he created a couple loops of the winding, soaring vocals, grabs a whistling noise maker and proceeded to do laps around the entire church audience while still belting out a few of his own vocal chords.

EFTERKLANG were up next. Efterklang are a band from Denmark who I have only gotten into pretty recently. I've used the "they sound like Sigur Ros" line trying to describe them, but they really don't. They have they're own form of genius that they hold all the rights to.

All 7 members of this indie orgy take the stage. The loops from that electronic mechanism start pounding. The lead ringman of the group, Casper Clausen, has his own mini drum kit which he starts really laying into. While the bands full time drummer, Thomas Kirirath Husmer, lays down the solid beat. The drums pound in synch. The church walls are bursting at the seams. The bass comes in, followed by the keyboard, followed by the violin, the egg shakers, the various musical instruments. The walls have exploded. Harmonious vocals soar until they are hot air balloons far from sight. The night has only begun.






With in the next half hour or so the following occurs: A cymbal is thrown on to the ground from the stage, we, the audience, are told to stand, we are told to sing and sing loud. We are all clapping, stomping, hooting and hollering. Life is beautiful and we all know this. The band joins us on the floor. We are engulfing them. We can swallow them whole if we wanted to. But let's not. The vocals continue to soar back on stage until they fade away. slowly, quietly, the night is almost over. The lights go on.