Saturday night was the ipickmynose presents (along with the Bay Bridged show that I’d talked about. The bill was Beatbeat Whisper (myspace); Or, the Whale (myspace)[1]; and Emily Jane White (myspace) at the Starry Plough in Berkeley.

When I got there a couple minutes after the door opened, the pub was already fairly full. People were sitting, eating, chatting, drinking, etc. The Bay Bridged boys and girl were there already and I said hi. In addition to the bands on the bill, I ended up knowing a good amount of people at the show, so it had a feeling of seeing a show with a lot of friends.

Emily and her band finished setting up and went through a quick sound check. Her band included her on piano, acoustic guitar and vocals; a drummer, a lead guitarist (on electric), an upright bass player and backup vocalist and a fiddle player. She started her set with a couple piano songs. It seemed it was hard to get across through the chatter from some of the crowd. After a few songs and switching to guitar, she seemed to grab the audience more. They played well. Her songs, as I’ve heard on Dark Undercoat are lovely, and that came across over the talking during most of the set.

Or, the Whale came on after a short break to set up all their many instruments. Before their set, the crowd had swelled to what I have to imagine was near capacity. They played a set of old favorites and a few new songs. One of the new songs that I really liked was called, I think, “Shasta”. It had Lindsay on lead vocals and Julie on harmony vocals. It was a really pretty song.

The group is really well practiced and knows how to rile up the crowd with their energy and songs. I would like to mention once again that Tim Marcus, who plays pedal steel with the group is absolutely great.

The crowd thinned a bit before the Beatbeat Whisper set; it was quite late by that point. Beatbeat put on a nice set of mostly unreleased songs. They’re solid and just exuded joy throughout. I always like it when a band enjoys playing and shows it. I’m looking forward to their new album that they’re working on currently; Davyd told me that it should be done by the end of February, but no word on a release date yet.

View my full photo album.

[1] By the way, I think Or, the Whale will singularly bring back the semicolon, if for no other reason than out of necessity.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 9:46 am Posted by adrian in SF bay area, blogs, live, photos, presents. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.