{"id":2674,"date":"2018-08-17T12:36:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T17:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=2674"},"modified":"2019-12-17T20:21:03","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T01:21:03","slug":"review-cake-ben-folds-tall-heights-blue-hills-bank-pavilion-08-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2018\/08\/17\/review-cake-ben-folds-tall-heights-blue-hills-bank-pavilion-08-13\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: CAKE, Ben Folds, Tall Heights @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion 08\/13"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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By Zoe Salvucci<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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Monday night at the Blue Hills Bank Pavilion, alternative\/funk-rock band CAKE kicked off their tour with Ben Folds, alternative singer-songwriter formerly of the Ben Folds Five, with Boston\u2019s own Tall Heights as support. It was a relatively mellow show whose energy, both in the music and the audience, grew as the rain pounded down on the amphitheater\u2019s roof. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tall Heights played a short set of electro-folk tunes as the crowd ambled in to take their seats. The band was not afraid to bring the audience into the songs, something every act of the night would go on to do, and the as yet scattered crowd participated eagerly. Ben Folds led his set with two solo songs, himself on vocals and piano, before bringing the members from Tall Heights back onto the stage to help with the instrumentation of his more musically complex songs. (Tall Heights singers Tim Harrington and Paul Wright noted during their own set that learning Folds\u2019s songs made them realize how simple their own were.) Folds had no trouble grabbing the audience\u2019s attention with entertaining anecdotes leading into songs, and banter with the members of Tall Heights. He even composed a song dedicated to Boston for the start of the tour\u2014during which a slip-up by Harrington caused Folds to insist they play the chorus again for good measure. Folds had fans on their feet as he approached the end of his set, playing more upbeat anthems than the songs rooted in piano and folk music. <\/span><\/p>\n

The energy was left hanging in the air as excitement brewed for CAKE, who are touring despite having not yet released their upcoming seventh studio album. One single from the album has been released, via Soundcloud, titled \u201cSinking Ship,\u201d but no further details have been specified. The only downside to CAKE\u2019s set was its length\u2014the band went on at 9:45 and were rushed offstage at 11:00, courtesy of Boston\u2019s curfew on excessive noise, but cutting into that time was a 20-minute sidebar in which singer John McCrea gave away a tree, requiring the winner of said tree to have correctly guessed what type of tree it was. (It was an apple tree). <\/span><\/p>\n

The band played well, though, in what time they had, opening with their older hit \u201cFrank Sinatra\u201d and closing the main set with their most mainstream hit, \u201cThe Distance.\u201d As expected, their encore consisted of funk-rock masterpiece \u201cShort Skirt\/Long Jacket,\u201d slightly sped up as they were crunched for time. McCrea\u2019s voice has not lost any of its dryness or abundant sarcasm with time, even though the band has not put out a release (besides \u201cSinking Ship\u201d) in seven years. Hopefully, this means the band is here to stay, despite concerns <\/span>McCrea has expressed<\/span><\/a> about the state of the music industry. Regardless, fans can expect at the least an album-length release in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Photo by Zoe Salvucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By Zoe Salvucci   Monday night at the Blue Hills Bank Pavilion, alternative\/funk-rock band CAKE kicked off their tour with Ben Folds, alternative singer-songwriter formerly of the Ben Folds Five, with Boston\u2019s own Tall Heights as support. It was a relatively mellow show whose energy, both in the music and the audience, grew as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525],"tags":[494,495,181,493,26,295,31,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2692,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions\/2692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}