Moon Taxi Played Bowery Ballroom [photos]

MOON TAXI PLAYED BOWERY BALLROOM [PHOTOS]

Photo Credit: Sarah Wolff

Let’s set the scene: The air was cold. The sky had been settling into an increasingly more alluring shade of dark purple since roughly 4:30pm. The twisted carcasses of cigarette butts were laid across Bowery as boots tread over them, heading quickly into the Bowery Ballroom – almost every pair stopped at the bar. The anticipation was set to eleven; it was time for a rock show.

Great Elk (@greatelkmusic) took the stage first and stunned the audience with an incredible blend of American roots and anthemic, whiskey-soaked rock and roll. They capture the strong songwriting of newer groups such as Dawes or The Avett Brothers, but have a genuine heaviness those bands seem to lack. Great Elk weren’t afraid to make things loud, and I genuinely appreciate when a band can power bomb your eardrums. Next up were The Ludlow Thieves (@ludlowthieves). With a strong pop sensibility and heartwarming, orchestral-influenced indie sounds, these NYC natives delivered an absolutely electric set lead by their frontman Johnny Musengo. They were the perfect precursor for the headliners, putting on a truly blissful performance that left the stage warm enough for the tirade it was about to host.

Erupting onto a stage backlit by zigzagged LEDs, Moon Taxi (@ridethemoontaxi) dove into an amalgamate of incredible genre-crossing, improvisational rock. Based out of Nashville (but pretty hard to tell by their live shows), they harness a unique advantage over most bands that are lumped in with the “jam-band” moniker: they have a fantastic singer (lead vocalist Trevor Tendrup), and they write fantastic songs.

There’s this other thing though…they can jam. Like, they really dig in. There’s constant harmonic interplay, unpredictable shifts in tempo, and a brilliant on-stage report. These guys do it like pros, relentlessly unabashed by any foreseeable mishap and casually shooting bulls-eyes with their instruments. This is a band that’s strangely different from all other bands in its genre. I mean, they covered “What Is Love?” and did it well. Needless to say, when my post-show cigarette joined its pre-show brother, it was a smoke well deserved.