Brian Slattery Photos
Ceschi.
Julio Ramos, a.k.a. Ceschi, beamed from the stage at the State House at a floor dense with cheering people on Friday night.
“Feel like I haven’t been home,” he said. Over the next two and a half hours, he and Anonymous Inc. — David Ramos on drums, Max Heath on keyboards, and Jane Boxall on vibraphone — rekindled their roots in the Elm City and proved that they remain a vital force in New Haven’s music scene.
The show had the stated purpose of giving New Haveners a chance to hear the band perform songs from Ceschi’s second album of 2019, Sans Soleil. But before that, they got to hear from three opening acts: Myles Bullen, from Portland, Maine; Sweetcreem, from Boston; and Billy Woods, out of New York City.
Bullen won over the already large audience through energy and sincerity, beginning with his first number, which had the chanted chorus, “I am not for everyone.” The crowd joined in fast. Bullen smiled.
“Now scream it like you’re screaming in the face of a cop!” he said. The audience did.
“Now turn to the person next to you and whisper it.” The audience did.
Bullen alternated between songs and spoken word, performing both with equal dexterity. His music was often poignant, as with a song he dedicated to a friend he’d seen around town — and neglected to take time to check in with — shortly before the friend killed himself. “If only I’d picked up that phone in time,” he rapped. “Never thought I’d be a suicide hotline.” In another song, he rapped to a beat he got the audience to make itself by pounding feet on the floor. He finished his set by getting everyone to sit on the floor while he sang a song on a ukulele. “I envision a world where we sing about everything,” he sang.
“We have to take care of each other,” he said. “We’re all we have in this world.”
Where Bullen connected by wearing his heart on his sleeve, Sweetcreem held the crowd’s attention through a compelling combination of dreamy, heavy pop music, sly lyrics, and striking visuals. The songs spoke of hardship, but always leavened with intelligence and humor. “This next song is about growing up poor, but having a lot of fun,” she said toward the beginning of her set. “Anyone here really like Andy Kaufman?” she said later, and when several in the audience whooped in response, she nodded with approval. A song she announced as being “not about my best friend” featured the lyrics “I’d like to disassemble you / I hope you hit me first.” The audience was with her the whole way.
“My name is Billy Woods, but you can call me Woods if we get to know each other,” the rapper said by way of introduction. He then charged through a series of hard-hitting songs that combined his declamatory style with moody, atmospheric beats. By this time the club was crowded enough that there wasn’t anything to do but pack close to the stage to connect better with the music. Woods’s tight set ended with him introducing the headliner of the evening. The crowd was ready.
Ceschi dedicated an early song in the set to a few friends who were going to prison for marijuana charges — “in 2019,” he said. He proposed that they play long that night and would take requests later. But for the first set, it was about celebrating Sans Soleil, and, as it turned out, Ceschi’s previous 2019 release, Sad, Fat Luck. The energetic crowd was moving by the second song. A blistering rendition of “Animal Instincts,” which featured both Ramos brothers on microphones while Boxall took over drums, made the crowd go wild. Ceschi and band then hopped off the stage and zipped over to the other side of the room for a quick acoustic set that brought the crowd in close, particularly for a raucous singalong of “Say Something” from Broken Bone Ballads. Ramos revealed that he had written the song on the eve of his own prison sentencing for marijuana possession.
“It was almost like diving into the ocean and being scared of plankton,” he said, when the reality was that “we’re covered in germs every day.”
A swerve into Anonymous, Inc.‘s particularly knotty originals, combining aspects of punk, jazz, and progressive rock, let all four musicians (Ceschi on guitar) show their chops while also whipping the crowd into a greater frenzy. Ceschi then announced the band would take a short break “so people can go home,” he said. “If there are three people left, we’ll still do this.”
Almost everyone stayed for that second set, which ranged across the Ceschi and Anonymous, Inc. catalog. The crowd’s shoutbacks got louder. The moshing got harder and harder. At one point Ceschi asked if anyone in the crowd was feeling like the energy was getting too intense, if anyone felt unsafe. Nobody did. Then the band launched into its rawest song yet, the people on the floor thrashing along. At last, the band announced it had one or two songs left, and the crowd let them go. It was clear the night was over, but people took a long time to drift out of the building, as if there was still more music coming — even though it seemed clear that everything had been said.
