Photo credit: Caitlin Murphy
Certain bands are so good live that you never get tired of seeing them, where attending their nearest tour stop becomes a given, and Baltimore duo Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, despite their nondescript name, definitely fall into that category. Some of the most captivating performers currently making the rounds, ESMB thankfully find their way to Milwaukee on a fairly regular basis, building up a substantial following in the area. Saturday night however, with a glut of shows going on, it initially seemed as if those fans weren’t going to show up, but that was rectified by the time they took the stage.
With a headliner this good, the opening acts could be just about anyone and it would still be worth the price of admission, but, gladly, the bill’s local warm-up acts were actually a generous bonus. Getting things started was Soup Moat, whose somewhat elastic membership has now expanded from a duo, and then a trio, to become a quartet. The extra guitar adds a nice charge to their noisy, humorous post-hardcore, allowing their new numbers a greater sense of space and handily beefing up existing songs, like the catchy “Uptowner Girl” from their recent Triple Eye Industries EP Enjoy Your Hobbies.
As more people continued to quietly trickle into the Public House, Milwaukee/Chicago duo (ORB), launched into the second impressive set of the night. Fresh off the release of their new, overdue debut album on Gloss Records, Inside Voices, the group, long a local favorite, finally has something substantial for audiences to take away, and this performance made an unsurprisingly strong case for why they should do so. Condensing the feel of spacey prog into concise, eccentric pop, they focused mainly on Inside Voices, but also snuck in some even fresher tunes, like the punchy, enticingly brief “Worse than It Was.”
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Happily, there was a respectable crowd by the time ESMB were done setting up, not that it took very long considering their gear consists of little more than a bass guitar, some pedals and a floor tom. How they manage to wring such complex music out of so few elements is almost beyond comprehension, but the end result is utterly bewitching: dark, idiosyncratic and uncompromisingly unique. Yet as intense as a songs like “When I’m in a Car” or “Airshow” are, the banter between them is affable and funny, rounding out a concert-going experience that is not to be missed.
