Tiny Vipers @ Neumo’s
Last night’s show at Nectar (Tiny Vipers, Peter Broderick, and Balmorhea) was a 180 degree turn from a lot of what I’ve seen lately. No electronic beats or loud drum kits to be found here, only a blend of acoustic instruments, occasional keyboards or electric guitars, and human voice, sometimes wordless.
Austin, TX’s Balmorhea opened the show, starting as a two-piece acoustic guitar duo before expanding into a 4-piece augmented by cello, violin, and some voices. They’re delicate, but somehow still intense and captivating, with songs that rise from a whisper to a dull roar. Without relying on the crutches of a full drum kit or big, amplified guitar riffs, they create songs that grow and slowly threaten to overwhelm, before subsiding.
Peter Broderick was a major attraction for this show. He’s a central part of the Danish collective Efterklang, whose last album, Parades, was a genre-destroying, epic musical exploration. His solo work clearly reflects the stately and complex melodic sensibilities of that band, while stripping down their orchestral grandeur to a setup suitable for a single musician with several instruments and a looping pedal. Violin layered on piano, layered on guitar, with additional hand percussion (shakers and sleighbells) formed the basis of most songs, and his rich voice brought it to the next level every time. One song was introduced with the spoken explanation “This next song was written by my father, he used to play it for me as a child.” It wasn’t until the first 32 bars had passed that we realized he had spoken this into his looping setup, and the announcement became a part of the layered composition. Another piece utilized clapping that had bled into his microphone from the audience to build up a rhythmic pulse. This was by far one of the most creative and impressive displays of musical talent I’ve seen in ages.
Tiny Vipers had the unenviable position of closing out the night, but she did so in style. Her deep, slightly twangy voice sang hushed and desperate songs over slowly picked acoustic guitar. The guitar was occasionally polished with a shimmer of ghostly delay, drawing her deliberate playing into streams of misty sound. Her set was mostly an uninterrupted stream of music, cresting towards the middle with a run of strumming that threatened to overload her delay device, turning the wash of guitar into a ringing, synthetic tone. The music slowly subsided from there, with one or two breaks for applause. It was a melancholy end to the evening, and somehow it was just perfect.
