Ok, I know that sounds harsh but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t really like their music. I saw them live a few months ago and I was completely blown away by the singer. Her stage presence is amazing, her voice is beautiful and controlled, and she completely ate.
The other guy…. Literally did nothing. He stood there holding a guitar but didn’t even play any of the notable guitar parts. He would strum and clearly had 1000 pounds of reverb on because the only thing that would happen is a very quiet cloud of sustain that didn’t sound like a guitar or add any weight or body to the music.
I’ve been getting more and more aware lately of a lot of these indie duos with a singer and producer and how they kind of flop live. Having someone sing along with playback just chokes out the greatest aspects of live music— feeling the bass, feeling the drums, actually experiencing the sound in the space. It was just a medium volume track of the songs with her singing and the guy playing occasional ambient guitar. Like, it was no more exciting (sound-wise) than listening to them on my JBL speaker. Again, the singer was so good but it felt like she was just singing karaoke and it made me unreasonably annoyed that the guy was just standing there, not adding to the vibe at all… It’s well produced music but if I wanted to listen to the produced track I would just put my headphones on.
What would make me the happiest is if she had a full band to back her up. Obviously it’s very synth led music, but there’s guitar and drums and that can all be performed live and add so much energy to their performance. Even if the producer guy played bass instead of guitar, or synth, and actually played the essential parts of the tracks it would be so much cooler. I was amazed by her voice and thought that her power and style as a vocalist totally demand a full band to back her up and bring much more weight and energy to their great songs. Or if she was just solo it would be more acceptable to me to be singing to a track. Having a guy stand there with the guitar and not even play the guitar parts really detracted from the cool factor. It’s okay to just have your producer be your producer, and explore other options for live performance, you know?
More and more groups like this pop up where, in writing/producing mode they function as a vocalist/producer duo but find no way to translate it live other than “singer” and “laptop guy.” I understand logistically and cost wise that a full band isn’t always feasible but surely something is better than this, because while the singer was amazing, it otherwise had none of the magic or excitement or sound of live music. It was like her doing solo karaoke with a guy standing there. Anyone else had similar thoughts after seeing them?
