Despite being an early show, artists Your Friend, Porches, and
Despite being an early show, artists Your Friend, Porches, and Alex G had no difficulty selling out Strange Matter last week.
One of the stops on their co-headlining tour, every act felt right at home in Richmond, easily playing to expectations and managing to keep a chatty crowd at bay.
Opener Your Friend showcased their ability to fill a room with a sound that’s intimate and slightly melancholic while also managing to be grand and dreamy. Taryn Blake Miller’s (photo below) voice continues to be the selling point for this act, tying the sound and themes together with the perfect amount of raw energy.
Your Friend toured for their first full-length album ‘Gumption’, which itself shows a lot of growth from their first release EP ‘Jekyll/Hyde’ which Miller described as “raw and innocent.” Though they performed a fairly short set, it set the tone for the night and served as a near-perfect introductory act for the other two Domino Records artists.
Check out our interview with Your Friend here
Porches (top image), touring for their latest release Pool stuck mostly to tracks from that album, effortlessly breezing between songs. The band’s dream vibes flowed well and proved to be an easy translation from recording to live show. By this point frontman Aaron Maine has been touring for a few years, and has recorded a wealth of materials for various labels over the course of a relatively short time. Pool, which was released at the beginning of February, was a change in tone from Maine’s earlier works, which he described as sad and angry, but ultimately cathartic.
Maine’s performance also felt more realized and less somber than in the past. The tone change was evident in the crowd, as many of the attendees in the front row danced and bounced throughout the show while belting out the lyrics.
Read our interview with Porches here!
Though different in sound and tone than the other two Domino artists, Philadelphia based singer-songwriter Alex G performed with the confidence and gravitas of a seasoned musician.
It doesn’t hurt that he is a seasoned musician; he’s got a wide backlog of previous releases, all of which were self-recorded.
Touring for his first Domino release, as well as his first album he didn’t record himself, Alex G seemed more than confident and the crowd ate it up. For the first time that night large portions of the crowd audibly sang along and the room crackled with energy. Though his Domino record ‘Beach Music’ may have been a bit more polished than his previous works, his live performances still contain that raw DIY flavor that made him so popular to begin with.
