photos by Christopher Tierney Photography
review by Josh Ewalt
It was a beautiful evening to be in Benson last Saturday. Two album release parties on Maple Street: one at The Sydney for Max Fischer and Downtown James Brown, the other at The Waiting Room with three distinctly different acts.
I chose Skypiper's release show for their EP, Troubledoer. Lawrence’s Cowboy Indian Bear and Twinsmith, one of Omaha’s finest new acts, opened the show.
Twinsmith began their set with beautiful, upbeat indie rock. While the band is relatively new, the delicate guitar playing mixed rather well with the very tight drumming. The song structures were complex, and the slightly scratchy vocals were quite pleasant.
Cowboy Indian Bear played second. The feeling produced by their music is one of contentment. During the set, even during the repetition of lyrics such as “It’ll get you high / Tear you limb from limb / But still you want it to / You want it to,” I felt OK with the endless contemplation that accompanies their music. And among the many positive dimensions of their sound, at least two features stood out to me on Saturday night: the complex vocal layering and somewhat avant garde drumming patterns.
Cowboy Indian Bear’s sound is slow, addictive and offers multiple points of entry for the critic, not the least of which is the complex layering of vocal patterns. During the song “Does Anybody See You Out?” — the band’s first single from their latest release, Live Young, Die Old — layering worked well.
And I couldn’t help but think that the overlaid patterns and tones characteristic of the CIB sound are perhaps best considered metaphorically: an in-song analogy for the multiple, and sometimes seemingly conflicting ways in which a listener can experience their music. While lead vocalist CJ Calhoun’s vocals are consistently exceptional, it was clear throughout the show that this was a team effort put to great effect.
Accompanying the overlapping vocal patterns was the highly unique drumming style wherein the percussion becomes a lead instrument as opposed to merely the song’s rhythmic skeleton. I caught up with the drummer, Beau Bruns, after the show to speak about the band and his drumming style.
“I just decided awhile ago that I didn’t want to just play drums,” he said. “I wanted to approach the drum set as an orchestra. … You’ll never hear me play a straight ahead hi-hat, snare, kick-drum beat.”
Instead, he remains more interested in creating unique combinations between the different pieces of the set that provide nuance and complexity to the already delicately woven songs of Live Old, Die Young.
It wasn’t but roughly 20 minutes between the time Cowboy Indian Bear broke down and Skypiper took the stage. The band opened with a cover of “The Boys are Back in Town.” It was instantly clear this was a band with indelible chemistry. The major chord guitar playing effectively matched the steady thump of the upright bass and complemented the rather straightforward, but upbeat rhythms.
While Skypiper has traditionally played more folk-oriented music, and they still have shades of folk instrumentation accented most by the use of an upright bass, on Saturday night, it wasn’t their usual previous Americana sound that stuck out. Instead, it was the incredibly catchy and immaculately crafted pop songs that characterize the live performance of Troubledoer.
Many of the band’s choruses throughout the night were absent of lyrics. One highlight occurred toward the end of the night when the band played “Troubadour.” This song is a perfect example of Skypiper’s new sound. The lyrics were all about audience engagement: “Put the sad songs in the trash, all you practitioners of wrong and right / Pick on guitar, the beat of a drum, like you’re running out of time / This the last song we’ll sing / So let’s sing something worth singing / Let’s get everybody singing.” The choruses include an immensely singable series of “la las.”
This was rather standard pop, but it was okay. As Lazy-i’s Tim McMahan put it in a review of Troubledoer, “There’s nothing dangerous about Skypiper. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing interesting about their music. It’s pure feel-good pop that begs you to sing-along.”
I met up with guitarist Kyle Christensen and front person Graham Burkum in a post-concert interview. Burkum and Christensen lent evidence to the evolution of the band’s sound: “Our sound has changed. It used to be really folky and then it evolved into more Americana. And now we are graduating more towards power-pop… just catchy pop songs that are as fun to listen to as they are to play."
While hesitant to produce songs that are “watered-down lyrically,” Christensen and Burkum said they are genuinely interested in creating music that “just [makes you] want to sing and jump around.” Most of the songs the band played that evening seemed to evidence this sentiment.
On the heels of a strong showing at The Waiting Room, the release of Troubledoer and the self-acceptance of the evolution that accompanies the maturing of a former folk band, Skypiper seems to be at the heart of a fortuitous alignment. As Christensen states, “We are happier than we have ever been. I feel like we are firing on all cylinders.”
Josh Ewalt is a Hear Nebraska intern. You can sing along to this review, if you’d like. Reach him at joshe@hearnebraska.org.