Stellastarr – Wild Light – Mason Proper – at The Troubadour – Los Angeles, CA

With the release of Stellastarr’s new album “Civilized” on July 7th the band embarked of a tour to play a little over a dozen cities around the country. 5 of those dates were here on the west coast with California being graced with 3 of those dates in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Every year they play LA, they come back to a venue that they always sell out, the world famous Troubadour which recently won an award for the best live music venue in LA.

One thing you can expect at the Troubadour is that they stick very close to the set time and in fine fashion at 8:30pm sharp opener band from Michigan, Mason Proper took the stage and began their set. Now we know that people generally discount opening bands, which may be the point of why we make an effort to get to the show a bit early to not miss the opener not only as a courtesy as well as to be able to report on the entire show. Sure, many time the openers are just ok, yet every time we show up early we are just hoping that this will be the time we are surprised. Well this was one of those times that we were super impressed with the opener.

This band is all about the heavy beat, with a bit of a dance club ingredient to it while still keeping it real. We were situated around some other people who had never heard this band before either and by the 2nd song in everyone was saying what a great band. The frontman Jonathan Visger has some great pipes that really deliver while he also operates some sort of synth key(board) type thing. The band is also a great visual to watch on stage, not so much that there is a bunch of jumping around, it was more like a lot of little things that each member of the band was doing on stage. The band has a very balanced stage presence and music that really brings it. The 30 minute set was short and sweet, leaving the audience wanting more.You ever get concert goer’s remorse…that remorse you get that you left the show without buying their CD so you could listen to it, well that was the case with this band, guess we will listen to their stuff on their website till we can get their CD. Again, one of the best openers we had seen in a long time.

Next up was another band we had never seen before, Wild Light There set started with an acoustic guitar and vocal that were, just ok, and it felt that the high energy that the previous band had created went down a few notches. Then when the guy that was playing bass during the opening song came up to center stage to sing the vocals on the 2nd song the show seemed to come back alive, this guy had a great voice that the vocal range filled the entire venue. Then right after that song they switched back with the opening singer. If you are confused reading this, we along with many of the people around us were confused as well.

See, this is one of those bands that contains so much talent with in it where every member can essentially play everything, they just kept switching back and fourth throughout the set with different instruments and different singers. It was like watching musical chairs gone weird on stage which made it a real challenge to get a baseline on this band and develop some rapport with the band during their performance. An analogy we heard from a gal who was ordering at the bar talking to her friend said that it was kinda like dating for 1 song, then breaking up and then dating someone else by the next song, then breaking up again and then dating someone new. This 4 piece is a very good band, no question about it, just the live show seemed to be a disconnect with all the changes.

Staying true to the Troubadour time clock after a brief reset of the stage, Stellastarr took the stage at 10:25 as the audience welcomed the band to the stage with clapping and out of control yelling. They opened the hour and 20 minute set with the third song off their new album, “Tokyo Sky” followed by the eighth track off that album “People”. The crowd was fully packing out the floor as the people from all around the venue poured into the mix. Then they took the energy in another direction from the previous 2 songs by performing “No Weather” from their debut release. The sweet backing harmony vocals of bassist Amanda Tannen on this track just melt you… actually her backing vocals on all of their songs will melt you… some songs will just melt you a little faster.

During a break in between songs, vocalist Shawn Christiansen said to the crowd that he was thrilled to see so many people singing along to the new songs considering that that the record had only been out for 2 weeks. With a long drum intro from Arthur Kremer signaled that “A Million Reasons” was next on the set list. The songs were being executed with such precision that the audience was truly getting an exact replication of the studio recordings being performed LIVE in front of them which is a testament to this band over delivering live consistently. Then the set bounced back to “Graffiti Eyes” from the current album.

This performance had one of the best sequenced set lists. Why praise is due here is that a lot of bands make the mistake of touring on a new album by only playing the songs of a new album 90% of the set which tends to alienate the crowd, since they were fans of the previous recordings long before the new ones. This set had a great mix of the new with the previous songs which helped introduce the new songs in a very effective way.

Next up was Sweet Troubled Soul, Freak Out, then as the opening notes of “Stay Entertained” began the crowd was going nuts! During this song every person that was there was singing along. The singing of the audience was so loud that you could barely hear Shawn sing the lyrics and the entire place was vibrating. As the crowd simmered down a little after that song, they went right into “In The Walls”. The set came to an end with “Jenny” where Shawn was rolling around the stage floor playing guitar to the leads. Then the band left the stage with Michael Jurin’s guitar left feeding back.

After some jeering from the main man at the front door motioning to the audience if they wanted to hear more, that the audience may need to get a little louder, no problem, the crowd cheered till the band made their way back to the stage for a 3 song encore that began with “Moongirl” to “Numbers” off the current album and ending the show with “My Coco”. With the show now over the clapping and cheering was just as loud as when the set started. The entire band went to front to take a band and thank everyone for coming and supporting them. Out front of The Troubadour a lot of people stayed milling around, talking about the great show that had just went down. This show was flawless!

If your city was not one that they stopped in this go around, Stellastarr said in a recent interview with us that they would be coming back to many other cities later this year that they missed.



Big Wheel Online Magazine

 

More photos of the show can be seen HERE

 
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