“You’re all incredibly polite, and it’s very much appreciated,” 19-year-old English folkie genius Laura Marling said to a rapt crowd assembled at the Music Hall of Williamsburg during a CMJ showcase presented by influential music blog Brooklyn Vegan on Tuesday night. In this case, polite implied far more than a restraint from jaded snark. Audience members waited in respectful silence as Marling—a diminutive figure who made the stage seem improbably huge—expressed her self-deprecating envy toward the American knack for clever banter while tuning her guitar. Accompanied by a cellist, Marling presented a mix of new tunes from a forthcoming album and older songs that much of the crowd clearly knew. Looking down from the mezzanine, you spotted fans in the audience mouthing the words as Marling sang “Ghosts.”
Marling’s set was just one highlight of an evening capped by tremendous performances from two of the festival’s most buzzworthy acts: England’s Fanfarlo and Brooklyn trio the Antlers. But perhaps the most satisfying thing about the showcase was its overall consistency: During a festival whose participants usually clubhop with mercenary tactical skills, here was one event you could happily linger over for hours.
The showcase started shortly after 7pm, when spunky Montreal quartet Think About Life kicked off a set of gangly, effusive sampler-enriched funk rock before a crowd of maybe 30 onlookers—a third of whom were photographers. For the most part, the bill ran like clockwork: The Walter Schreifels Band quickly recovered from a momentary technical glitch to deliver a loose set of well-crafted, rootsy rockers, ending with a darkly bluesy cover of “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel, a Denver group newly signed to the Rounder label, conjured the ghosts of Nick Drake and Gram Parsons with spare, moody folk-rock wrapped in grainy arrangements anchored by a fantastic bassist, Julie Davis.
After Marling’s performance, the Antlers proceeded to raise the roof with a set that edged close to art-rock bombast. Tearing through songs from its recently reissued breakthrough effort, Hospice, the group mustered a performance that reached previously unheard peaks of intensity—both the Mars Volta and Pink Floyd came to mind during the Antlers’ display of urgent vocals, howling guitar feedback, spacey keyboard excursions and whip-crack drumming.
A longer-than-normal set change preceded Fanfarlo’s appearance, likely due to the group rushing over from an earlier engagement at Pianos. Swedish frontman Simon Balthazar managed to snap a string during the breezy acoustic set-opener; happily, Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons) bounded onto the stage with a replacement ax between numbers. (”Oh, man, sounds even better than mine,” Balthazar brightly chirped.) Balance established, the sextet bounced through a cheerful string of songs from its debut album, Reservoir. As Fanfarlo negotiated six-part vocal harmonies and clever instrumental arrangements—extra credit for Cathy Lucas’s fiddle, mandolin, glockenspiel and musical saw—you knew the group was worth every ounce of advance hype expended on its behalf.
Below, exclusive live video from Tuesday night’s Brooklyn Vegan showcase.
Laura Marling
Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel
Video by Liz Kreutz
