Matt Pond PA, Lost In The Trees at Cat's Cradle

Matt Pond PA rolled through Carrboro last night and brought their melancholy pop songs with them.

The band played a nice set that featured songs from quite a few of their albums but focused on their latest album, Last Light. The band opened with "Last Song" from their 2004 album Emblems and rolled on through their set. Highlights of the night included "People Have A Way," "Last Light," and "Lily Two." The band were set to play "Snow Day" from the EP Winter Songs, but Pond said that you can't play songs about snow where their is no snow. After the main set, the band returned to play a short encore of "Wild Girl" and "Taught To Look Away."

The band's set was good, but failed to reach great status due to the shitty sound. From the moment the band took the stage, the vocals sounded hollow and ringy and it seemed that the snare, vocals and guitar were all fighting over the same frequency range. The bass was barely audible throughout the night and the drums sounded weak. Nothing in the entire mix was clear. The mix was mush and made the show hard to enjoy. The band's performance was the saving grace of the set. You can tell when bad sound ruins a good show when the crowd never seems to connect with the music and that was the case last night. A small pocket of the crowd didn't seem to notice though because there were numerous displays of bad white dancing.

Moving on, Lost In The Trees started the night. The 12-piece ensemble is led by former member of The Never, Ari Picker. The band sounded phenomenal. Picker's lush, symphonic pop songs were delivered expertly by the group which included members of The Never, Auxiliary House and other Trekky bands. Lost In The Trees nearly stole the show last night.

Now the refuse of the night. A Clerestory from Raleigh played second and was awful from the first note. They had the nerve to open with Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" which led into one of their own songs. The band sounded like a cheap knock of of The Fray (yeah, it was that bad). The songs were weak and their was too much going on with two guitars and keys. This is one local band that isn't currently worth your time.

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Lost In The Trees