The Hazel Project

SpaceLand is a club very similar to Cat’s Cradle in vibe but a little smaller. Surprisingly, unlike CC, Spaceland is the only club I’ve been to in L.A. that has an indoor smoking area. Which I thought was against state regulation but somehow they get away with it.

The room sounded decent but the engineers I think were constantly battling a big stage sound which makes their job harder. I guess I was under the impression that was the reason they had jos at spaceland; so they could address the more difficult mixing issues of certain bands instead of someone who mixes by the “Eleventy Principle”.

It’s the vicious catch22 of sound engineering.

One thing I noticed at this gig is Great Northern has become SO adept at what they do live, they can trascend monitorboard barriers; which plagued their Halloween show if I recall.

Great Northern’s live show has gotten even stronger since the last time I’ve seen them. They segued into songs more smoothly, and played through the set whether the sound on stage was perfect or not. They’re also fleshing out the look of their stage show with a couple of props and ‘icons’ centered around leafless trees. Very Autumnal.

In my humble opinion, they are THE band that could use a dedicated mellotron/ moog player in their personel lineup. Even if it were just for gigs instead of a regular member of the band.

As it is now they play those parts on an ipod. The good about that is that they’ve become excellent at selling medium tempo songs with an appropriate amount of energy. Meaning the energy is authentic instead of forced which give them A LOT of power on stage.

Musically, my draw to Great Northern are the vocalists. Rachael and Solan’s vocal parts blend beautifully. I asked Solan at one gig how much extra compression they used and about any tube pre-amp gear they had to process vocals. He said none. So their vocals really blend that nicely, in real time and space just hitting the board pre-amps and a touch of house compression. Last night the vocals were even tighter than the Halloween gig at Boardners.

The Drummer and Bass player have also gotten tighter. When I first saw Great Northern it was Ashley’s (bass player’s name I think) first gig with them. What’s so refreshing is to see a band take a situation that could be devastating, -(like-going from a 5 pc. to 4 pc. band; putting the original bass player on drumset; and hiring a new bass player)- instead of destroying the band, actually get better from the ground up! It’s been a pleasure to see this lineup grow in such a short period of time.

NEXT, my favorite subject. EAR CANDY! Great Northern uses percussion very effectively in the live show. Playing Percussion is so salient live because there’s so much action behind it. I remember being taught by Sherman Hong that the way one strikes a drum is just as important visually as it is musically. And he’s right. Watching Rachael pound a Floor Tom on stage is pretty visceral to watch. It’s the combination of elegance and tribal catharsis. This is also the only band I know of that uses sleigh bells in more than one song! An instrument that could easily get lost in the mix added a bit coolness instead. All in a good way.
And finally. some of the guitar efx sounded like sputnik burning into the atmosphere.
Controlled but uncontrolled as my friend Sam Ortallono would say.

It was a great gig at reasonable prices (free) and am very much looking forward to the one in March.
Currently Great Northern are on tour with Division Day and if they come anywhere close to your town it would be wise to see them now.

Stephen A. Thomas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under on the path, posts & stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.