Concert Review: Horse Feathers w/ Dawn Landes and Andrea Ball

Alternating between a small yellow guitar and a keyboard, Denver’s Andrea Ball was charged with warming up the crowd. It was she who took a few songs to get warmed up. With a disingenuous smile and disconnected eyes that glazed over the top of the audience, Ball led her uncomfortable-looking band through the first half of their set.

Her drummer was the first to loosen up, dramatically contorting his upper body to the beats and earning cheers from the audience, causing Ball to joke about his very loyal following. Soon enough, the bass player found his groove and Ball let her breathy voice and sweet lyrics do their job. While the trumpet was an unexpected but beneficial addition, the trumpet player looked deep in thought, confused or on drugs the entire show, and fostered the least amount of audience connection. Nevertheless, the poppy melodies and sometimes cacophonous swells earned the audience’s attention and the band succeeded in setting the tone for a fun night of live music.

Occupying the middle slot was Dawn Landes, a Brooklyn-by-way-of-Kentucky folkstress who is married to Josh Ritter and sometimes plays glockenspiel for Hem. In addition to layering her guitar over her singular bandmate and varied samples, Landes incorporated bells and maracas. These elements, as well as the kind of lyrics one would expect from an album titled “Sweetheart Rodeo,”created a merry atmosphere and the two performers seemed genuinely ecstatic to be creating music.

Unfortunately, the audience wasn’t exactly captivated, and a loud buzz of talking could be heard in between songs and during softer sections of music. This was not unnoticed by Landes, who sheepishly thanked the eager-to-be-rowdy-on-a-Friday-night audience for listening after reading a small excerpt from the Denver portion of On the Road.

For a band that shares its name with a Marx Brothers movie, Horse Feathers sure didn’t mess around. Taking the stage close to midnight, and after a tempered “Fuck yeah!” by bandleader Justin Ringle, it was straight to business. The rousing set was little on talk but big on all-consuming music and mystical ambiance. All band members sung backup, but the lyrics were secondary on most songs – often the words themselves were lost and their voices acted almost like additional instruments. Ringle’s face was quite theatrical at times and his stomping on a tambourine helped to deliver dramatic effect.

The crowd ate it up, with the resident Hi-Dive hipsters rapturously quiet and the folksy girls stomping along. Sam Cooper deftly played banjo and percussion simultaneously and earned crowd interaction points when he gave a shout-out to his mom who was in attendance. Nathan Crockett, whose mustache is a strange counterpoint to his otherwise 15-year-old looks, played the violin with lovely precision and cellist Catherine Odell rounded out the pretty-girls-in-dresses theme of the night. Closing the show with a hauntingly beautiful cover of Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl,” Horse Feathers confirmed just what exemplary musicians they are and sent their audience home feeling musically satiated.