To close out March, the BSP Lounge had a fantastic night of music filled with creativity and improvisation and Marco Benevento.
The night started with Home Body, the wonderful music of Eric Hnatow and Haley Morgan. Their sound was just as unique as their look. Eric has a way of looping his keys around Haley’s soaring vocals that fuse the two together into one beautiful wall of sound. With dance moves that go along with the beat of their songs, Home Body is very entertaining. Another interesting part of their show is that they have lights arranged around them that meld perfectly with their music. It is one of the best do-it-yourself lightshows I have ever seen. Home Body is not to be missed when they come to your area if you are looking for interesting, creative, and experimental music to dance to.
Marco Benevento came to the stage next and slayed the crowd from the get-go with “Fireworks” that got the room moving immediately. There is a freedom to how Marco moves up and down the keys that forces the audience to guess what is coming next. He has become very comfortable leading the band into anything from his repertoire. The recent addition of vocals has added another layer to his music adding a beautiful new instrument to the mix for him to play with. The vocals are often manipulated by one of Marco’s toys on top of his piano and this makes it seem as if there is a hidden robot on stage that knows how to sing. This is just the beginning of a new way for Marco to experiment on stage in broadening his sound.
The talented Dave Dreiwitz on bass and Andy Borger on drums backed him throughout the evening and made it feel like a nonstop jam. Since the release of Tigerface, these three have been touring hard and the way they play off one another shows how confident this band is right now. All three are masters of their instruments and any song is possible for them, as was highlighted by the teases of The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” and LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great,” both of which occurred as tangents in the middle of original music. The night also saw the debut of new music that the three of them have been collaborating on and the direction that Marco’s music is going is great.
Though the crowd was not large, they were more than ready to show as much love as they could for what was happening on stage. They helped count off the beginning to “The Real Morning Party” and danced and shouted throughout the songs as though nothing else in the world mattered. The great “Limbs of a Pine” followed soon after and the jamming went wild as the tiger head Marco has on his piano was passed around for each musician to wear as they got their individual moment to shine. This is a trio not to miss as they are the top of their game and constantly looking to improve by trying out new ideas. They push one another to new musical heights that seem to have no limit. Marco Benevento can be seen at the Brooklyn Bowl on April 20th.
