Last Thursday, Florida indie artist Ben Cooper (above) brought his project Radical Face to the Brick and Mortar Music Hall in San Francisco. When I first got to the venue The Albatross Choir from Oakland were already onstage creating joyful sounds. I was only able to catch two songs from their set, but they closed it out with the classic Shimmy Shimmy Cocoa Pop from the movie Big.

The Albatross Choir

Fresh off of touring with Gomez, the next artist to the stage was the Portland indie folk band Greylag. Their set was opened up with their song “Tiger”. The sounds played in this set were a nice transition from the choir into the indie sounds that we would be receiving soon from Radical Face.

Greylag

The venue was now completely full as Cooper prepared to take the stage. Only a couple of days before the show (10/4) Radical Face released The Roots – the first in a trilogy of albums to be released in The Family Tree project. After hearing a couple of songs from the album prior to the show, I was excited to hear them in live form.

Cooper accompanied by his two band mates announced that there were free cds of The Roots back at the merch booth. This was a nice way to start the show and then the set was set off with “Names”, the first song off of the new album. Continuing with the new music, they next played “Black Eyes” – also from The Roots. Someone in the crowd yelled out Fletcher and Cooper responded with “Wow! Did someone just yell Fletcher? That’s the school that I was almost kicked out of”.  Before playing “Winter is Coming” off Ghost, Cooper says “Wish me luck because it’s hard to play”. This song was incredible live and the sound of Cooper’s voice and the harmonies that flooded the venue were amazing.

Ben Cooper and the Albatross Choir

The next part of the show was by far the best part of the night; this is when the Albatross Choir came back onstage to join Radical Face. Leading into “Severus and Stone” Cooper said, “This one is about a boy watching his twin brother die”. The stories that Cooper tells are told with such conviction and carry a serious amount of emotion. Before closing out a set that had already left me in awe, Cooper and the choir played a song from Robin Hood “Not in Nottingham” and his most popular song from commercial play “Welcome Home”.

After giving The Roots a couple of listens I would definitely recommend picking it up

This is a short tour for Radical Face, but he still has a couple of dates left – check below

October 11th: Los Angeles – The Bootleg Theater (with the Easterly Singers)
October 22nd: Arlington, Virginia – The Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ (with the Yorktown Vocal Ensemble)
October 25th: NYC – The Studio at Webster Hall

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