“Distraction is the deeeevil,” David Van Witt half-hummed into the microphone, his voice riding the monotone-heavy edge of a whine. From his larynx, an Ayurvedic chant rose to meet something sordid and experimental. Aerial views of Manhattan swirled behind him, cut by flowers blooming in stop motion, big swirls of black and white. A rush of white smoke, reeking of chalk, billowed into the crowd. Its members murmured delightedly, stepped forward with their cell phones turned to flashlight mode, and began to sway through the white haze.
Lucy Gellman Photos
Named after a friend’s four-year-old son — and a not-so-subtle mashup of literary references — the Brooklyn-based Odysseus Finn gave a stunning performance last week at BAR, where the band opened for Elison Jackson’s tour kickoff. Performing against a carefully curated, mind-screwing 45 minutes of film projection, members Van Witt and Michael McQuilken brought the audience under their blessedly dark and harmonic spell, injecting BAR with their delicious brand of “musical storytelling of revolutionary ideas.” True to their group’s name — if you’re going to draw on Homer and Mark Twain, you’d better not mess it up — they didn’t just hit the mark. They sprang over it, and kept going.
The group’s sound is fresh and has a magnetizing force. There’s a little bit of The Books here, a dash of The Decemberists’ “The Island” there, and some heavy-handed references to David Lynch and even Infinite Jest. But beyond that, the duo has spun their luscious vocals into a brand of electronica that is Donna Haraway’s worst nightmare and wet dream rolled into one. While Van Witt, who performs solo under the moniker Henry Flowers, has a folksy, wail-friendly sensibility that makes you want to put on your lightest linen dress and go frolicking in a lush cannabis field, he is another performer entirely when playing with McQuilken. Their siren song is enough to drown in.
The entranced state in which they left the audience was a perfect opening for Elison Jackson’s mix of inventive, quirky vocals and smart, free-flowing instrumentals.
With frontman Sam Perduta at the helm, the band unleashed a set of the audience’s favorites.
Freshwater pearls. Rusted spoons. Satin-soft rubber and dulled but shiny coin faces.
And gold, lots of vocal gold, to dance the night away.
