Buffalo doesn’t often attract acts of international fame. We are blue collar, local people, that support local brands names, business, and, surprisingly, artists. In this area, name recognition sells, in the case of music, a sense of strong regionalism exists, which, serves detrimental to attracting big name international artists (that and the fact that we lack an appropriate mid-size venue near the downtown area, or a modern rock station). However, our adjacency to Canada and our shared broadcast zone with Toronto, will occasionally gives us a taste of good music via Toronto’s 102.1 the Edge; a modern rock station that is audible in some areas, more so in the Northtowns. It was on this station in 2004, that Buffalo first heard the Bedouin Soundclash’s “When the Night Feels My Song”, a genre eluding echoic blend reggae, ska, and indy. Since then, the band has toured around the world, including the American festie circuit (SXSW and Coachella to name a few), and released several highly regarded albums. This past Saturday, the Town Ballroom was lucky enough to host them.
Opening the show was Buffalo based indy-pop quartet, The Etchings. The band has been playing together for quite some time now, touring regionally, with some of its members touring nationally, and has gotten slotted on many of this summer’s free concert series, opening for big name artists. The band’s website is proof of how hard they have been working, and the set was proof that you get out of music what you put into it. The set was incredibly tight, each layer producing perfect tone, and was on par with a national act.
After the Etchings won over the local crowd, the Bedouin Soundclash stepped up and played an amazing, crowd pleasing set. Grabbing songs from their entire collection, the crowd often echoed the heavy hitting lyrics of singer Jay Malinowski. The band played a few off their Sounding a Mosiac album, closing the show out with the easily singable “Nothing to Say”, as well as a few from 2007’s Street Gospels, including crowd favorites “Walls Fall Down”, and “12:59 Lullaby”. There were of course a handful off the new album (which is more than worth checking out) that got worked in, including the tracks “Rolling Stone”, single “Elongo”, and one that struck a personal chord, “Fool’s Tattoo”.
Malinowski kept switching between his hollow-body and his bridge pick-up mounted guitars, expanding his tone, and alternating echoes from song to song, keeping the audience on their toes, whilst cohorts Eon Sinclair and Sekou Lemumba held down the rhythm. Sinclair is probably one of modern rock’s tightest bass players, and the recently added Lemumba (he joined the band before their most recent album) adds a some low end tom sound that previous drummer, Pat Pengelly, did not bring to the table. Overall the show was fantastic, and the modern day Canadian Bedouins exceeded the expectations their albums promise.
~sm
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