Angus and Julia Stone Sway the Crowd at the Fine Line

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T’was the night before Thanksgiving and all through the house, a photographer was running as quick as a mouse.

Grabbing his gear because another was sick, he had to rush to cover her gig.

No research he’d done and much to his shame, he even needed to look up the artist’s name.

That riddle solved, he went downtown alone, all prepped and ready to cover Angus and Julia Stone.

So that’s how I found myself at the Fine Line on Wednesday night knowing precious little about the artist’s I was going to see. The evening started with Luke Sital-Singh who described his job as “I’m supposed to warm you up with f’ing depressing songs”. He started with set with “Cynic” from his 2017 albumt “Time is a Riddle” with a strong voice echo that actually repeated his words through the Fine Line, much like an echo in the mountains. Hailing from London it was actually his 2nd time in the Twin Cities, he had performed at the Turf just a few weeks ago. There was a sad quality to his set, but there were plenty of uplifting parts and the crowd in the packed Fine Line seemed to enjoy his set quite a bit.

Angus and Julia Stone are a brother/sister folk (at least according to their Wiki page) duo from Sydney, Australia. Despite my ignorance of their existence, they have a ton of fans all over the globe and released their 4th studio album “Snow” a couple of months ago. Their set started with 3 songs from “Snow” and I quickly came to appreciate their layered sound and how their voices weaved through their music. Angus slightly rough voice is complimented by Julia’s who switches from angelic, to breathless, to sometimes even a bit country sounding seemingly without effort. I would describe their sound more as dreamy indie pop than folk – but who knows, maybe it’s folk music to our friends down under.

As their set progressed I found myself more and more drawn into the net of sound they were weaving. Their fans at the sold out Fine Line felt the same, pretty much everyone was swaying to the music. One observation, side stage held the most amount of guitars I have yet seen at the Fine Line ready to be handed to the band for different songs. I also liked the duo integrated the trumpet into their songs softly augmenting just the right parts. Overall, I owe a thanks to whatever bug that took out our schedule photographer for introducing me to a couple of artists that I would have remained ignorant about otherwise.

Set List:

  • Baudelaire
  • Make It Out Alive
  • Cellar Door
  • Heart Beats Slow
  • Chateau
  • Wherever You Are
  • Bloodhound
  • Private Lawns
  • Who Do You Think You Are
  • Nothing Else
  • Yellow Brick Road
  • For You
  • Big Jet Plane
  • My House Your House
  • Snow
  • Harvest Moon (Neil Young)
  • A Heartbreak
  • Yellow Brick Road
  • Santa Monica Dream

 

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