Photo Credit: Allen Halas
Sylvan Esso at Cactus Club
On Monday, it only took minutes for indie pop duo Sylvan Esso to sell out Bay View's storied Cactus Club, after revealing that they'd make a surprise stop on a break from their current tour with Odesza for a special Tuesday night set. The Bay View club isn't just a chance selection, though; producer Nick Sanborn and vocalist Amelia Meath formed the band after playing a show at the venue in 2010. More than a decade later, they would return to celebrate the occasion, as well as raise funds for the Midwest Access Coalition abortion fund.
The room filled to the back wall by about 15 minutes to showtime. Much of the crowd were fans that were likely more used to seeing the duo in previous Milwaukee settings like the Pabst Theater, where the band last played a pair of shows in 2018. The set that would ensue would be over an hour of music that could resonate in any room, but felt especially cozy in Cactus Club’s environment. With above-average production for a venue of that size, it created the type of scenario that made you question if it was actually happening, if only for a moment.
Sanborn and Meath reveled in the change of pace from what would normally be arenas and amphitheaters. While a lot of the core components of a big concert were present in their performance, there were smiles all around, making the show feel like a glorified rehearsal with a capacity crowd of close friends. The set list was also, for a large part, an experiment. Roughly seven of the 18 songs that made up the Cactus Club show are in the regular set for their current tour, and Heath revealed to the room that they usually don’t play many of those songs live. Radio regulars “Train” and “Die Young” would get the crowd involved, and tracks of that magnitude were augmented by album cuts from their latest LP, No Rules Sandy. The night was an experiment, with a room full of enthusiastic guinea pigs dancing and singing along.
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Photo Credit: Allen Halas
Sylvan Esso at Cactus Club
The unforeseen byproduct of packing a smaller room to its walls, though, was the amount of heat that it pushed towards Sanborn’s command center of synthesizers and modular equipment. Twice, one of their computers would overheat, putting a brief pause on the dance party. Everyone in the room took things in stride though, and it even allotted for Meath to practice some comedy to fill time. On the second pause, Sanborn thanked the crowd for filling the room, divulging that he at one point worked at Cactus Club, and it was special for him to come back and play that same space. After some adjustments to on-stage fans, the back half of the show went largely as planned.
Prior to “Echo Party,” Heath explained that it would normally be the last song of their set. However, in lieu of doing a traditional pause and encore, they would have to carry right on because, frankly, there was nowhere for them to physically go off-stage. The duo would close out the night with a three-song pseudo-encore, including “Rewind” and “The Glow” from 2017’s What Now. In a night full of special moments, one more would cap things off, as they were joined by Chris Rosneau of Collections of Colonies of Bees for a cover of Califone’s “Funeral Singers,” which the two bands released as a collaboration in 2018. It was only the second time that they had performed the song live. If any fans were skeptical about the $45 ticket (with all proceeds going to Midwest Access,) moments like those made it well worth the price of admission.
The night would keep going in the main bar, with Rosneau DJing as fans milled about. Given the circumstances of the short announcement window leading up to the actual sold-out show, Tuesday night with Sylvan Esso felt like it brisked by with a whirlwind pace. In that span, though, it created enough moments at just about every turn.
