The Rock and Roll Hotel burst with energy Sunday night as it played host to the final stop on Anathallo and Aloha's joint tour.
Local band Roofwalkers opened with meticulous psychedelic instrumental journeys that left the audience pulsating with their catchy melodies. The band did what any opener should - engage the audience to the point that it forgets it actually came to see someone else play.
As Anathallo took the stage, the audience was swept into the band's layered sonic world, woven together seamlessly from each of the seven members' contributions. At times, just their ability to make one, unified product is stunning to witness.
"When you're working with seven people, naturally over time everybody finds spaces to make the song what it needs to be...and it ends up being less about playing all the time and more about focusing on the song, " said Matt Joynt, the group's lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, in an interview with the Eagle.
The Chicago-based band, originally from Mount Pleasant, Michigan, opened their set with "Italo," a track off their unreleased album "Canopy Glow," following up with fan favorite "Hanasakajiji IV: A Great Wind, More Ash" from 2006's "Floating World."
Part of the band's unique sound comes from the way they write music. Joynt and Bret Wallin, another of the band's multi-instrumentalists, said that they don't have a firm process, but the process they do have comes from the way they communicate. In addition, only about half the band has formal musical training, which increases their willingness to step outside the box.
"I think if you just stick with theory," Wallin said, "that can be limiting...some things aren't supposed to work so you don't try them, whereas if you're only sticking to feeling, you maybe wouldn't be able to smartly manipulate the music."
Another aspect of Anathallo's uniqueness comes from their willingness to use anything that will make a sound during a live performance. The weirdest thing they've ever played? No, not the scissors that Wallin said sometimes made him nervous to play onstage. Not the popping balloons. Instead, a "baby bike tire" wound up with twine and attached to a mic stand with a stick placed in the spokes to make a percussive whirring sound.
While "Floating World" was unmistakably a concept album, "Canopy Glow" is "way less specifically driven by concept," Joynt said. "It's way more driven by...the aesthetic of the songs. And [the songs] are structurally more like traditional songs. There's still not like something anyone would hear on the radio, but..."
Laughing, Wallin jumped in, saying, "We actually repeat things now ... I think some of our earliest releases were a little brighter sounding. I think maybe perhaps "Holiday in the Sea" and "Floating World" are a little more moody. This might be a slight return to some of the original energy that you could find in some previous records."
On stage, Anathallo highlights their performance with theatricality, from furiously beating drums to acting out their songs to complementing melodies with chiming hand bells.
Each song in their set was as strikingly evocative and playful as the next, and they seemed to effortlessly win over every member of the crowd who had previously looked at them as an obstacle to Aloha taking the stage.
Aloha's four-man set-up contrasted sharply with Anathallo's cluttered staging, but their sound was every bit as orchestral. Steeped in synthesized sounds, marimba and strong guitar riffs, they continued to push the dynamic show to new heights.
Lead singer Tony Cavallario's vocal performance brought depth to the intimacy of the small venue that, paired with Cale Parks' lightening-quick, expert drumming, gave their set a sense of emotional connectedness without sacrificing its edge. T.J. Lipple's work on the marimba rounded out the band's musical arsenal, which proclaimed that they know how to play rock 'n' roll.
Perhaps the best moment of the night was when Bret and James of Anathallo joined Aloha onstage, complementing the group's rock sounds with their horns. At that moment, the camaraderie between the two bands was apparent, as was the fact that neither was looking forward to parting ways.
