Event Description
Box Office Hours
Tuesday - Friday
10:00 AM - 5:30 PM
(319) 688-2653
info@englert.org
Purchase tickets at the Box Office or Online
7:00 p.m. Doors
8:00 p.m. Show
Description
Dark Bird Is Home doesn’t feel like it came from one time, one place, or one tape machine. The songs and sounds were captured in various countries, studios, and barns, and they carry a weather-worn quality, some dirt and some grit.
If you’re a fan of The Tallest Man On Earth, Dark Bird pays real tribute to the old records you fell for, and goes new places you’re going to love as well. If you’re new to The Man: holy shit! Many would be jealous of your position. Enjoy these songs, and know there are 40 or more other gems waiting on earlier albums and singles.
Early in Dark Bird, toward the end of the opening track, we hear other voices and sounds backing Kristian Matsson’s own. One of them, later credited in the liner notes with Angel Vocals, shows up
several times throughout the record, adding new color to the familiar palette. And so the story grows and expands. That first song has horns and a piano, keyboards, synthesizers, and other modern
noisemakers… and by track two you’ve got The Tallest Man on Earth as full-throttle rock and roll. While Dark Bird is The Tallest Man at his most personal and direct, deeper and darker than ever at
times, it’s also an album with strokes of whimsy and the scent of new beginnings — which feels fresh for The Tallest Man on Earth, and well timed. Reliably, the melodies and arrangements are sturdy and
classic, like old cars & tightly wound clocks. The lyrics and their delivery are both comforting and alarming, like tall trees & wide hills.
The other musicians and layers on this recording put a wide lens on familiar themes. Fear and darkness, sleep or lack of it, dreams in the dark and in the light. Moving, leaving, going. Distance and short stops, long straight lines, temporal places. More hopefully, a grateful nod to a traveling partner, a healing mind. Maybe a little forgiveness needed. Definitely some things to forget. And of course, that last song. The title track. If there is a little legend-building to be done here, let it be this scene a few of the album’s early-listeners can recount: Kristian gently warning them over their shoulder before track ten begins: “Watch out for this one.”
You should expect the loudest and proudest sounds yet from The Tallest Man on Earth on album number four, but also the softest and the lowest. For the next few years, the Dark Bird tour will come to
your city or a town nearby, and for the first time The Man is bringing a band to the stage with him.
About Lady Lamb:
To many, Lady Lamb is an enigma. Her songs are at once intimate and unbridled– both deeply personal and existentially contemplative. Aly Spaltro is a fearless performer who can command a pitch black stage with nothing more than her voice. Yet, when the band bursts in and the lights come up, what began as a demonstration of restraint shifts seamlessly into an emphatic snarl. On her newest work, After, Spaltro explores dualities further – giving equal attention to both the internal and external, the before and after. Her most palpable fears and memories are on display here, with a familiar vulnerability even more direct than her last effort. After boasts driving rhythms, bold melodies, candid lyricism, and a growling sonic stamp that is all her own.
Spaltro’s formative years were full of change – moving houses, cities, and countries every three years until she landed in her family’s home state of Maine. It was here that Spaltro found her voice among thousands of films at Bart & Greg’s DVD Explosion, an independent rental store in the small coastal town of Brunswick. During the day Spaltro would rent movies to the locals. At night she would lock up, pull out her 8-track recorder, and create songs completely uninhibited by musical conventions, learning to play and sing as she hit record. These creations brought forth nearly one hundred recordings, twelve of which were carefully curated and fully realized on her 2013 full-length studio debut Ripely Pine (released on Ba Da Bing! Records). Ripely Pine garnered praise for its lyrical intricacies, emotive vocals, and often unpredictable musicality, introducing Spaltro as a formidable new artist.
In between tours, Spaltro returned home, focusing with laser-like intent on writing, arranging, and demoing the songs on After. These new works – which found Spaltro co-producing with her Ripely Pine partner Nadim Issa at his Brooklyn studio, Let ‘Em In – are sonically vibrant, with an assertive use of grit and brightness. Thematically, they provide direct insight into Spaltro’s rumination on mortality, family, friendships, and leaving home.
There are many songs on After that explore themes of a much larger scale. In “Heretic” Spaltro sings of a childhood UFO sighting in Arizona. In “Batter” she dies in a plane crash, while in “Spat Out Spit” she questions whether she was even born at all. Alternatively, in “Billions of Eyes” Spaltro can “only see into her suitcase,” her mind simultaneously present and wandering as she “gnaws [her] way back home.” The tender and sparse “Ten” delves into her mother’s childhood diary, giving the listener a clear view throughout into some of Spaltro’s warmest memories of her loved ones. Ripely Pine was marked by an undeniable passion and confidence, but where it sometimes lacked in personal narrative and directness is where After shines. The last line on After encompasses the self-assurance of the work as a whole, stating “I know where I come from.” This theme is a constant throughout After, as Spaltro seeks to allow the listener to move in closer than ever before, to reflect on the past with grace, and envision the future with fervor. Spaltro invites us to contemplate the dualities that make us human, encouraging the celebration of both fear and love: internally and externally, before and after.
