Strapped By a Whisper

I began March with a show, Film School, and ended it with one. Quite a good way if you ask me. To end March, I attended my friend's art being displayed, and afterwards, saw A Whisper In The Noise (AWITN) and Arab Strap at the Entry. What an incredible show! AWITN beefed-up their older songs, and chilled us to the bone (in a good way) with their newer stuff. Wes Thorson, the singer and mastermind, displayed incredibly emotional theatrics onstage. He'd croon with eyes shut, head down on the keyboard at times, and then violently snap his head up and scream his head off! It's a powerful scream, though; not annoying to the ears at all. It was a great dichotomy, one that works well with this band. The drummer is so loose, so fluid, he doesn't seem human at all. Their set refreshed my pure enjoyment for them. Their newest CD will be out April 18th, and I'll definitely be picking it up.

Then Arab Strap came on, and I couldn't believe it. The large, bearded, nicely-dressed Scot sang a melodic opener that felt almost as if I was watching a modern-rock singer hold and move his microphone about very passionately. Definitely nothing wrong with that; I just haven't seen that done in quite a while. Their music alternates between sounding bright and dark, which is great since their lyrics are very sexual and depressing. Quite a combo, and they execute it flawlessly. They had great crowd banter, even with the occasional yelling rant about something Scottish in origin. But that was to be expected. Their newest album, Last Romance, is strikingly beautiful to say the least. I highly recommend it.