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Singer-songwriters Courtney Barnett of Australia and Kurt Vile of Philadelphia performed at the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday, November 4 as part of a tour for their collaborative album <\/span>Lotta Sea Lice<\/span><\/i>, released just a few weeks prior. Although both musicians have enjoyed considerable success\u2014Barnett is a rapidly rising star of the indie scene, while Vile was a member of The War on Drugs before leaving in 2008 to pursue a solo career\u2014this album marked their first release as a duo. It was a partnership that made sense to fans, as the two artists share many musical elements, including twangy rock-folk guitars and candid, dorky lyrics. <\/span><\/p>\n The show opened with a set from Jen Cloher, fellow Australia native and longtime girlfriend of Barnett. Cloher performed alone with an acoustic guitar, singing a handful of mellow, melancholy tunes reminiscent of, if slightly darker-sounding than, those of Barnett (who cites Cloher as a major musical influence). Throughout her set, she kept the audience entertained with anecdotes of her life with Barnett and their cat, Bubbles, as well as some stories from her childhood. Her pleasant and charming performance more than set the stage for the headliners.<\/span><\/p>\n Barnett and Vile, donning matching flannel shirts and black skinny jeans, were joined on stage by backing band The Sea Lice, which consisted of bassist Rob Laakso (a Boston native, as Vile pointed out multiple times), Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa, and English keyboardist Katie Harkin. They began their set with \u201cOver Everything,\u201d the first single from their album, a cheery and relaxed duet which saw improvised guitar solos from both artists in the live performance. They played nearly every song on their album, including Cloher cover \u201cFear Is Like a Forest,\u201d corny ditty \u201cBlue Cheese,\u201d and the more powerful, driving \u201cOutta the Woodwork.\u201d The only <\/span>Lotta Sea Lice<\/span><\/i> song omitted from the performance was \u201cPeepin\u2019 Tom,\u201d a reworked track from Vile\u2019s 2011 album <\/span>Smoke Ring For My Halo<\/span><\/i>, though the set had no shortage of cuts from each artist\u2019s solo material. They played Barnett songs \u201cDepreston\u201d and \u201cDead Fox,\u201d from her 2015 album <\/span>Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit<\/span><\/i>, as well as \u201cAvant Gardner\u201d from 2014 double EP <\/span>A Sea of Split Peas<\/span><\/i>. Vile sang only on the first of these, offering just guitar parts for the other two; likewise, Barnett stayed quiet for \u201cPretty Pimpin\u201d (from 2015 Vile album <\/span>b\u2019lieve i\u2019m goin down<\/span><\/i>), though she contributed vocals to the same album\u2019s \u201cLife Like This\u201d as well as <\/span>Smoke Ring For My Halo<\/span><\/i>\u2019s \u201cOn Tour.\u201d The encore included a cover of Gillian Welch\u2019s \u201cElvis Presley Blues,\u201d which Barnett and Vile performed without the Sea Lice.<\/span><\/p>\n Although the musicians were solid and in sync on stage, their performance suffered from a noticeable lack of energy. In sharp contrast to Cloher, Barnett and Vile made little effort to interact with the audience, save for the standard repetitions of \u201cThanks for coming out\u2019\u201d and \u201cWe\u2019re so happy to be here.\u201d Musically, there was almost no difference between the live show and the recorded songs, and neither musician had a particularly captivating stage presence. In addition, there were many missed opportunities for vocal harmonization: though both incredibly talented singers, the two chose to sing in unison for most of their songs, including the tracks from each solo artist on which the other opted to perform vocals. The set would have seen drastic improvement had there been some more interesting harmonies. Nevertheless, Barnett and Vile put on a generally satisfactory show, and further collaboration between the two artists is greatly anticipated.<\/span><\/p>\n -Leonora Telford<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Singer-songwriters Courtney Barnett of Australia and Kurt Vile of Philadelphia performed at the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday, November 4 as part of a tour for their collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice, released just a few weeks prior. Although both musicians have enjoyed considerable success\u2014Barnett is a rapidly rising star of the indie scene, while Vile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525],"tags":[26,248,247,249,250,251,31,252,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978"}],"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=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}