Here We Go Magic And Henry Jamison At Signal Kitchen In Burlington, VT July 3rd 2013

Words by Tim Lewis.

I wandered out last night and caught the fireworks on the ferry dock near Breakwaters.  I, somehow, managed to avoid the major crowds and wandered up Main St and went over to Signal Kitchen.  I had listed to a few Here We Go Magic songs online, and liked what I heard.

The underground venue was cool and dry, but warmed up a bit as it filled with people.  Henry Jamison opened solo, with some sparse indie rock songs played on a black hollow-body electric Les Paul guitar.  The songs had odd time signatures and were kind of fun to follow along with.  After three solo tunes, he brought up his stand-up bass player and drummer.  The songs had a bit of a fuller sound, but weren’t too far away from what he played solo.  The bass player used the bow almost as much as he plucked it.  Their set was fun, but not over the top, or anything.

After a fairly long wait, Here We Go Magic took the stage.  With two guitars, bass, drum, and keys, the sound was a bit thinner than I expected.  They played really well, and the songs had challenging changes, but never fell into that happy place that you want to be musically.  Intellectually, it was interesting to see where they were going with the songs, but emotionally, none were engaging.  Several songs in, I decided to give them a couple more.  During the second, I was still not engaged.  The lyric said something about going or staying, so I followed the idea out the door.  I think that I’m glad that I put in the effort, and took a chance, but if I had missed it, it would not have been a big deal.

This post was originally published by Tim Lewis at his personal blog, https://timstriangletribune.wordpress.com.