The Barboza in Seattle’s Capitol Hill is less than a year old and sits in the basement of the better-known Neumos. It strives to bring more local acts to the stage — a mission that brought Seven Colors, Shenandoah Davis and Tomten together there on January 29th. For such a variety of sound on one bill, anyone who came for just one of the bands certainly would walk away a fan of all.
Kicking off the night was Seven Colors, a fine quartet of cap-wearing soundists. They introduced the set with purely rhythmic percussion and bass that expertly and without hesitation braided in new beats, counts and sounds to make it feel that by the second minute, we had already been through an entire set. Then the flute came. This is much how Seven Colors’ entire set went – it was an unrelenting continuum of forward momentum that had folks helpless not to move, if only with a subconscious toe-tap.
Shenandoah Davis followed with more nontraditional sounds – the main instruments were a piano, some violin, percussion and a pretty, pretty voice. Initially, coming from someone who does not adore the more feminine of the female vocals, I was a bit concerned for the next half an hour of my life when Davis started the set on a more than beautiful vocal note.
My fear was soon relieved, however, when the accompaniment harshed the beauty enough for a charming result. The audience surely agreed. As the night continued and more people trickled in, the front of stage area filled to enjoy a well-mixed set of old and new tracks. Slowly, pointed swaying and dancing replaced the unintentional movement from Seven Colors’ set – attention that was well deserved.
Full circle, just as the Seven Colors flute came as a surprise gem in a stack of rubies, then there was Tomten. Tomten can actually be classified as internationally acclaimed, which is a pretty big selling point for a band that will be only celebrating its third birthday this year. After winning Seattle’s biggest Battle of the Bands, the band was invited — yes invited — to Reykavik, Iceland to play Menningarnótt, one of Iceland’s largest cultural festivals.
If we weren’t convinced enough by that, the band’s hometown show certainly defended their international — well…Icelandic — fame. This blissful Baroque-indie-dream-pop (have I mentioned that I truly love hyphenating genres?) band created a live sound that resembled their recorded one while bringing energy that can’t be garnered from their studio albums. With Tomten’s second song, “So, So, So” off of Wednesday’s Children, even the hesitant back-standers were drawn to the stage to pay serious attention to these guys. As a habitual conclusion to an overall stellar night of performance – well played by all, well danced by all, well done by all.
Tomten photo by Jonas Seaman
