Baroness ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

“7-year-old girl headbanging like some shit next to me @ baroness #bumbershoot” 5:05pm Sep 6 via Twitter for Crackberry (follow me @eyesoredown)

Yeah, I tweeted that. I couldn’t help myself. Despite the huge kid grin she had on her face, the little girl next to me was headbanging with great ferocity.  Not only that, she doing it in-time and on the beat. It was pretty amazing. I wanted to take a picture of her drop-C tuning celebration but I pictured an uncomfortable dialogue taking place before that could happen:

Me: “Hey man, your daughter rules! Could I take a picture of her and put it on the internet?”  Father:“Uhhhh….”  Me: “Crap, that sounded bad…”

Needless to say, I decided against going that route. Instead I furiously kept typing notes and attempted to keep my own headbanging in rhythm. I can’t decide if Baroness was the most impressive act of the weekend or not. I expected more from them than the rest of the acts and they went above and beyond to ensure that I was not disappointed.

Baroness delivered a masterful performance. The set-list had great flow, once a song ended you had to cut short your applause because you wanted the next song to begin. They played all their songs with precision and the charisma of the bearded guy in those Dos Equis commercials. In fact, I think they need to do an additional commercial for the “World’s Most Interesting Man” campaign with a reference to this Savannah, Georgia quartet. “I don’t always listen to epic, storytelling sludge from the southeast United States, but when I do….” (cue artificial harmonic)

Baroness ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

Charisma can’t be under-valued when it comes to a live performance, it can really make or break an opinion. There are heavy, technical bands that I absolutely adore on record, but when you go see them live it’s like watching animatronics performing at your local Chuck E. Cheese. I’m talking the most rigid movements you’ve ever seen. Sometimes I think those bands have fishing line strung to their lips that their sound crew pulls on occasion which forces them to crack a smile. Baroness was having none of that. Despite having to constantly keep their their dual guitar attack in syncopation they were consummate showmen. They could have been performing as a trapeze high-wire act and I’m pretty sure they still would have pulled off the same six-string mayhem. They reminded you why guitar players get all the glory.

The set-list was a healthy dose of both the Red Album and the Blue Record. I’m probably one of very few fans that has remained on the fence as it relates to the Baroness song “Jake Leg.” After seeing that song played live, it might be one of my new favorite songs off the Blue Record. It still has a ways to go before it overtakes “The Sweetest Curse,” another song which was fantastic on the final day of Bumbershoot.  Baroness played “Grad” without missing any of its couple hundred guitar pull-offs. If any song can be directly traced to minor arthritis  it’s this one. However, while Baroness management team was ordering calcium pills by the truckload, Baroness was busy inducing heart dysrhythmia during the introduction of “Isak.” Those pick slides drenched in delay and nervous heart beat of the bass drum have been known to cause anxiety.  I completely lost it when they went into that song, there are so many elements that make it memorable. For me, it’s the crazy “did you just fall down the stairs?” descending guitar line that takes place after the chorus. Whenever I hear it, that five second sequence never seizes to amaze me. Baroness also played a couple other of crowd favorites, “A Horse Called Golgotha” and the song that got me into the band into the first place, “The Birthing.”

If you have a chance to see Baroness (I’m looking at you Australian and New Zealand Sound on the Sound readers) in the near future, I wouldn’t pass it up. This is a band you can appreciate whether you’re into this kind of music or not. I saw a few couples that could’ve been my grand-parents giving the “devil horns” to Baroness as they played. A woman accidentally slammed her umbrella into the side of her husband’s face during one of the songs, she was rocking that hard. Despite the rain, the minor technical problems with the bass player’s amp and being scheduled at the same time as a handful of local acts, there was no denying the power of Baroness on Monday evening.

Baroness ::: photo by Abbey Simmons