J. Tillman took the stage at the Middle East Upstairs for a late show on Sunday night. But then again, it was only 8pm in Seattle, the west-coast town that this drummer from Fleet Foxes calls home.
The performance was a family affair, with J. Tillman’s brother Zach opening as a solo act called Pearly Gates Music. Zach Tillman offered us a stripped-down version of his already sparse style: leaving behind all unnecessary instruments, he came to us as one man and a guitar crooning blues and covering Pavement’s “Shoot the Singer.”
The Middle East Upstairs is an intimate venue, allowing audiences to rub noses with the performers. Zach Tillman self-deprecatingly commented on this lack of personal space: “Whoa, dude. You guys are close. Last show, there was like a 15-foot perimeter. And not because there was security or anything. People just chose to be that far away.”
After Pearly Gates, the flannel-clad, full-bearded band backing J. Tillman took the stage to a surprisingly chill audience. The place was packed, but these hipsters were polite, exerting themselves only just enough to pass as decent human beings. Was it Sunday night after a long weekend of parties?
Or maybe it was simply that the performance took a few unexpected twists. If I could have listened to J. Tillman’s soothing croon all night, I couldn’t have asked for more. It’s what I was expecting from a Fleet Fox.
Instead, J. Tillman vacillated between a straight-up folk artist sound à la Sam Beam and smash-and-shred noise-fests à la Sonic Youth. It made for variety, but not in the peanut-butter-and-chocolate vein of brilliance. More like peanut-butter-and-salsa. And it made me queasy.
There were moments (of pure peanut-butter smoothness) where the steel and acoustic guitars and J. Tillman’s voice transported me to heights of pure nostalgia, a place where things couldn’t have been more right with the world.
And the encore brought the lullaby tunes I had been craving all night: J. Tillman and his acoustic guitar serenading an audience with “James Blues” before we stumbled home to bed. This, folks, was all I really wanted.
