Photo Credit: Jackie Fortis<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Review by Gabriella Knapp<\/p>\n
Humorous is not the way I thought I would describe the same man who wrote \u201c<\/span>You ever see me as the one you’d want around for the rest?\/Was I just a face to flush until it’s absent of red?\/You made me come and made me leave and made me come again\/I know that I should hate you,\u201d <\/span>but that\u2019s how I would describe Kevin Atwater. His Boston show on Wednesday, Sept. 23, was an intimate experience full of, as expected, heartbreaking lyrics. Unexpectedly, however, his witty crowd work defined the show.<\/span><\/p>\n The evening began with Jessie Mazin, whose incredible voice and melancholic melodies immediately set the mood for the night. Her set was soft and beautiful, but Mazin brought playfulness and wonder to it as well. Mazin\u2019s highlight was her rendition of \u201cPart of Your World\u201d from Disney\u2019s \u201cThe Little Mermaid.\u201d She later performed her song \u201cLove, Make Me a Believer.\u201d The song had been released earlier that day and was met with a warm audience response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When Atwater took the stage, he began with a song off his newest album \u201cBlush Red.\u201d The stage was awash in low red lighting, creating an ambiance that was simultaneously intimate and charged. It seemed tailor-made for the album, a concept record centered around a story of lust and love that unfolds over the course of one night. His storytelling was not only present in the lyrics, but also in his movements and expressions. Atwater brought the concept to life onstage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He then moved into two songs off his earlier album \u201cAchilles.\u201d He performed \u201clonely gift,\u201d a song about letting a person hurt you because they themselves are hurting, according to Atwater, and \u201cthe cage,\u201d about an illicit relationship between a younger version of himself and an older man. Both are absolutely heartbreaking songs with vivid imagery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Just as quickly as Atwater emotionally devastates his audience, he breaks the tension with a quick joke. Before he played his third song off \u201cAchilles,\u201d Atwater joked with the audience about his tendency not to write bridges. Atwater\u2019s humor continued throughout the set. He joked with the balcony about a screech the AC was making, and even encouraged the audience to cheer as he drank water so they wouldn’t hear him swallow. He kept asking if we were really in Boston, or if the Sinclair was in Cambridge. These moments were so personable; the pure heartbreak that followed them became even more hard-hitting.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the night, Atwater was accompanied by guitarist Jessie Houle and drummer Hunter Lewis. The three of them brought life into the stories told onstage. The instrumental energy really picked up during \u201cGod in my Head,\u201d which Atwater says is his favorite off the album. The audience response seemed to agree.<\/span><\/p>\n The crowd held their own against Atwater\u2019s onstage charisma. He received not one, not two, but three pins from the audience. Two were of him and fellow songwriter Jake Minch, and one simply said \u201cTwink,\u201d which he chose to pin on his shirt.\u00a0 The best recurring bit of the night was before he began to play. Atwater would introduce the next song by saying, \u201cI\u2019m gonna play a song, but imagine I didn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Later, Atwater brought Mazin back out to cover \u201cAnything\u201d by Adrianne Lenker, much to the emotional rapture \u2014 perhaps dismay? \u2014 of the audience. He showed off his guitar-picking virtuosity during this song, highlighting where he gets his inspiration for his affinity for rhythmic precision in his own music. To top it all off, he brought out his clarinet for his song \u201ctil august.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When Atwater left the stage before his encore, he joked with the audience, who were also in on the joke that he would, of course, come back out.\u00a0 When he came back onstage, Atwater returned to a crowd response akin to that of a glam rockstar, even signing one fan\u2019s forehead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Atwater delivered a stunning performance at The Sinclair, masterfully navigating the emotional places his music will take you: heartbreak followed by laughter, and quiet into noise. \u201cBlush Red\u201d tells the story of one night, and Atwater succeeded in bringing that to life \u2014 not only through the music, but by making the audience feel part of the story too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photo Credit: Jackie Fortis Review by Gabriella Knapp Humorous is not the way I thought I would describe the same man who wrote \u201cYou ever see me as the one you’d want around for the rest?\/Was I just a face to flush until it’s absent of red?\/You made me come and made me leave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26292,"featured_media":54984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525,1523,15],"tags":[327,2777,140],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54980"}],"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\/26292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54985,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54980\/revisions\/54985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}