Photo Courtesy of Digital SoulFood
The Brooklyn based band Yellowbirds opened to the gathering crowd of last night’s Celebrate Brooklyn Bandshell. While the crowd was at best half full at start of the Yellowbirds’s set, it had become extremely packed by the end.
Yellowbird revealed a few new tracks to the receptive Prospect Park crowd. Of these the most interesting was “Kepler 62”, named after a star with two life-inhabitable planets in its orbit. Lead singer Sam Cohen described the two planets as symbols of hope and that “if we completely f–k this planet at least there is still hope… this is just one life in the universe that’s thrown away. There’s something else out there.” He then quickly added, “That’s not to say you shouldn’t care about the planet.”
After a few more songs, including a pleasantly upbeat “What’s Out There”, the band exited as the crowd cheered for their hometown musicians.
By 9pm the crowd got quite antsy and began chanting for Warpaint to take the stage. When the Indie Rock ladies took entered the crowd roared appropriately. Before the beginning, the band took a quick moment to introduce their (relatively) new drummer Stella Mozgawa.
Warpaint expressed their gratitude at being back in NYC with warm weather this time around. Although, it may have been a bit too hot for the band on stage, as vocalist Emily Korkal had to take off her coat to the affectionate cheers of the crowd. To this she jokingly ordered “It’s so hot. Take off your clothes. Start making out with each other!” Fortunately (or unfortunately) no one followed this order.
At one moment Jenny Lee Lindberg put down her bass for a moment and the crowd cheered, knowing a vocal performance was soon to come. Chants of “We love you Jenny” overlapped much of her singing throughout the night.
Around 10 pm the band concluded their concert and left the stage, but their absence was short lived. After minutes of chanting for an encore, the audience was rewarded with Korkal singing “Baby” to the extreme satisfaction of the crowd. The rest of the band joined her to complete a half-hour long encore which concluded with “Elephant”. At the end guitarist/vocalist Theresa Wayman thanked the audience and Bandshell, which she called “a celebration of language. The best Language is music.”
In between the two bands the organizers of Bandshell took the time to promote the festivals new “Celebrate Music App”. The free App provides constant updates of the festival throughout the summer.
Stay tuned for our continuing coverage of the Brooklyn Bandshell. Next up is tonight’s triple delight concert of Shovels & Rope, Valerie June, and Shakey Graves.