REVIEW: The Wild Feathers, Lauren Jenkins @ Brighton Music Hall 6/14

By Alyssa Lai

So it’s 8PM, a Friday night, and you have a 7AM shift at you job tomorrow morning. You’ve just spent the entire day lounging around your apartment, and damn, you really want to go out and dance the night away with some good music, but you don’t exactly want to get carried away… Since, you know, you have to wake up early for that job. This was my situation last weekend, but don’t worry, there’s a happy ending here. Rather than heading out to a nightclub and regretting my decisions in 11 hours, I spent my evening at Brighton Music Hall, enjoying the music of Lauren Jenkins and The Wild Feathers.

The show began with a wonderful performance by the Texan-born country singer Lauren Jenkins. She performed solo with only herself and an acoustic guitar, and she needed nothing more. She brought a positive energy as she played her music, and not only that, she joked and laughed right along with the audience; she was one of the most relatable artists that I’ve seen on stage thus far. Not only that, but her songs and her lyrics were great to dance along too, despite never hearing about her or her music before that night. Her set consisted of songs that were fun — such as “Payday,” a song that was about how she always ended up spending her paychecks on music and booze — and personal — her single, “Give Up the Ghost” was excellent and touching, about falling in love with someone who would never love her back. Her voice had a rough grittiness to it that made the lyrics sound like a rock n’ roll version of Taylor Swift’s pre-1989 music, and it could not have been a better fit for Lauren Jenkins to open for The Wild Feathers, an equally energetic and fun country rock band.

The Wild Feathers’ began their set by appearing on stage amongst the growing fog clouds from the fog machines. At first, it was an odd combination: purple and yellow flashing lights with small flames bursting from the sidelines as five silhouettes appeared, three of which were wearing cowboy hats and one who looked like your typical lumberjack. It was a humorous entrance, especially when they looked like out-of-place cowboys who might have just stumbled on stage in a drunken stupor and found the rack of electric guitars. But the surprise was quickly swept away as they began their set with one of their most popular songs, “American.” It was a strong start. The song began with the strumming of a single acoustic guitar, but it wasn’t long before the electric chords joined in and the crowd went wild. During the bridge of the song, the band slipped into a jam session on stage, rocking out in their flannel and cowboy hats and bushy beards. Truthfully, they looked quite out of place. But as they continued to play their music and the acoustic guitar began to play more in sync with the electric, I understood. Their music was almost a perfect mash between classic country and modern rock. They continued their set with more songs from their newest album Greetings from the Neon Frontier, such as “Stand By You,” “Hold Onto Love,” and one of my personal favorite songs by them, “Wildfire.” They ended the first half of their performance with “Golden Days,” to the request of two giggling women standing in the back with a giant sign that read “Please Play GOLDEN DAYS.”

After a short break, they quickly returned to pay some of their older songs, “If You Don’t Love Me” and “Left My Woman.” However, their best performance of the night that made the entire night out worth it came when they played “Don’t Ask Me To Change.” This song was another one of my favorites by The Wild Feathers and one of the first songs I listened to by them, but it was the ballad of one of their less popular albums. However, when they performed it on stage, the song was fast and to my surprise, the lead singer, in the middle of the song, grabbed a harmonica and leapt off the stage to play his harmonica and dance with the crowd as the rest of the band jammed. It was completely unexpected, especially with the harmonica, but it was fun and exciting nonetheless. This was the kind of entertainment and enjoyment I needed just before getting up at 6AM the next morning. Needless to say, I might have been just a little grouchy the next morning about getting up so early, but I did not regret my choice of going out to watch The Wild Feathers one bit.