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Band(s): Beardfish Date: 2009-06-21 Venue: Zoellner Arts Center City, State: Bethlehem, PA Reviewer: Nick
After attending all of last year’s North-East Art Rock Festival (NEARfest), I was certainly happy to be heading back to the Zoellner Arts Center to see a single act this time around, namely Sweden’s Beardfish. Thanks to seeing the festival last year, I could tell that as they were coming on, and during their set Beardfish were certainly getting an overly warm reception, and it showed how much the bands popularity has been increasing since the release of Sleeping in Traffic, parts 1 and 2.
After walking on stage and doing some brief tuning the band surged right into “Roulette” and quickly showed their prog chops on the NEARfest stage. It was a very good choice for opening song, seemed to go over well both with fans of the bands and the many there who were hearing their very first track from the band. Throughout the set the band played a healthy mix of songs from their now five album deep career, if you include the forthcoming Destined Solitaire. The band treated the audience to the performance of its title track, along with another song to close out the main set which was a live premier! Throughout the show keyboardist, guitarist, and vocalist Rikard Sjoblom did a fantastic job in conversing with the audience. Quirky humor had the audience in full on laughter between pretty much every song, and he would mention song meanings, the previous state-side appearing at Prog Day 06, or find something else that was somewhat more serious to inform the audience of. Although Rikard had the full attention of the NEARfest audience between songs, there is no doubt that bassist and backing vocalist Robert Hansen was the star during the songs. The man moved liked he was picked off a disco floor and placed in the center of the stage, and the man was one hell of a bass player to boot! Always entertaining I noticed he didn’t wear shoes on stage, surely to make all the shuffling around he did easier. In all everyone was quite solid in their performances, with only the vocals seeming to stray from the albums from time to time, possibly due to illness as Rikard consumed an usually large amount of water between each and every song.
As this is my first review of a live show, I will note now that sound quality from the band and venue can make or break a show for me, and for this show, it certainly helped make it. The bass sounded better than I’ve heard in quite some time, probably best compared to that of Mariusz Duda from Riverside. Such a strong perfect tone that allows for the bass to go way up in the mix without distorting or disturbing anything else, while pick playing allowed for it not to sound twangy. Keyboard tones were phenomenal and came across clear, which was very important. Although Rikard only played keys on about half the songs, in the songs he does, especially the newer ones they are essential. My only real complaint, and it is minor, was the drums. Snare could have been lower while the toms could have been higher. As with the entire festival last year overall sound was near perfect!
After performing for an hour and a half and taking a bow Beardfish left the stage to an ovation that quickly became a standing ovation. This continued for about a minute when you saw one of the festival organizers step on the stage and motion for the band to come back out. Last year I only remember the headliners of each night getting encores, so I think this was something truly special! So the band ripped through “Sunset” before heading offstage once more to another powerful standing ovation. All-in-all a fantastic show, one which I was very happy to attend as I procured my ticket about 15 minutes prior to the band going on! These guys will be opening Dream Theater’s Progressive Nation 2009, and I truly recommend you go check them out; their music is a strong mix of 70’s prog influence mixed with all the best of today’s Swedish eclectic prog scene, and these guys will not disappoint live.
Update, 2009-06-22: Only 29 hours after Beardfish finished their set at NEARfest it was announced by Mike Portnoy that the band, along with Pain of Salvation will not be along for Progressive Nation 2009 due to their shared label, InsideOut's owner, SPV filing for bankruptcy.
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