Neil Shah - Pianist/Vocalist/Composer

This is a sort of belated post about a show I saw on May 1st. It was one of my favorite persons/groups, named Aqualung–aka Matt Hales. Matt hails from the UK and brings a Coldplay-esque vibe to the arrangements of his beautiful songs. He usually plays the piano, often accompanied by just his brother , but often also with a full four-piece band.

What’s great about Aqualung is that I’ve seen them 3 times—each time promoting the same album–and everytime they played the songs completely differently. The songs themselves are so great, that the varied arrangements just bring out different qualities. The show at the Bowery Ballroom was the first time I’d seen the whole band paradigm, and they rocked–with tons of energy and dynamics. Matt had a cold (it seems like he has a cold everytime I see him), and even forgot the words to one of the encores, but it didn’t matter. Great show.

I also got to see the support act, David Ford, who was very good. His stage antics were a bit overly dramatic at times though. But Effective.

Back to Aqualung. They are going into the studio to work on their first major release–for Columbia Records I think. I’m pretty sure they are going to blow up and be extremely popular in the next year or so. I’m really glad I got to see them at these small venues before things get out of control. Keep an ear out.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 1:00 am and is tagged music, events. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.