Pattern Is Movement | First Unitarian Church 2.27.08
Posted: February 28th, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: live, music, philly, photography | 1 Comment »
I felt ancient standing among the crowd at the St. Vincent/Foreign Born/Pattern Is Movement show last night at the First Unitarian Church. Looking around I realized that I was 10-years senior (or more) to over half of the crowd, which pretty much filled a good portion of the room (Paul, this should make you feel really old, HA!). Shit, there was even an 8-10 year old kid in there who rolled right up front with his parents looking dapper in his suit and all. Must have been first communion, bible night, or some shit upstairs in the church and his parents decided to catch some of the show before heading home.
The “venue” itself is as churchy as church basements get – linoleum flooring, flourescent lighting, a backstage filled with those metal folding chairs and tables, and kid art hanging in the hallways. Stage lighting consists of dimmed incandescent bulbs recessed in the drop ceilings common to these sorts of spaces. Given the “sunday school/bingo night” feel of the place, it’s actually a pretty rad place to catch a show.
Pattern Is Movement was the main reason I braved the frigid weather last night and they were the first of three to take the stage. The classically train duo of Andrew Thiboldeaux on vocals and Chris Ward on drums were situated side by side on stage.
For a duo, the band has an incredible amount of energy and presence on the stage as Ward pounded on the drums with sweat flying and Thiboldeaux sang in an exaggerated tenor as he hammered away on the rhodes and mellotron. The resulting sound is unconventional pop music with weirdly phased rhythms and a bit of classical or theatrical flair in the way the vocals are delivered. This was my first time hearing most of the band’s new songs, so I can’t compare them to the recorded versions, but given the band’s unorthodox sound, their music flows and comes across extremely well on stage. Toward the end of their set, the duo unleashed a pretty kick ass cover of Radiohead’s “Everything In It’s Right Place,” pulling it off surprisingly well with just two people.
Pattern Is Movement is on tour now, making a stop at SXSW in support of their new album, All Together, out May 6th on Hometapes.
[MP3]: Pattern is Movement ”Right Away”
All Together, Hometapes; 2008
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