White-hot rock artists Grace Potter and the Nocturnals turned the heat up even higher in Vancouver on Saturday night at VENUE on Granville. Playing to a sold-out room that chanted them on to the stage, GPN fed off that energy and rode that magical circle of band feeding off audience feeding off band feeding off audience until everyone is caught up in the same suspended moment in time making hours disappear into nothing buy pure enjoyment.
Potter is a once-in-a-lifetime vocal force. She is, perhaps indisputably, the best female rock vocalist to emerge in decades. Blessed with both insane natural ability and unbridled passion, she gave her all to the VENUE crowd in the kind of vocal performance where one could easily imagine her going toe-to-toe with Robert Plant or Steven Tyler and more than holding her own. Whether belting out rockier tunes like “Paris” or “Medicine” or making it soulful with “Low Road” or “Things I Never Needed”, Potter sang with both nuance and conviction, power and abandonment.
Guitarists Scott Tournet and Benny Yurco seem to be polar opposites in terms of stage mannerisms and guitar styles, yet the way in which their respective styles and approaches blend is absolutely a huge part of the core of the GPN sound. Tournet more just stood and delivered, providing tasty lines with a minimum of fuss. Yurco was like a man possessed on stage. A whirling dervish if you will, but one chunking out great rhythm or offering up soaring lead lines while he spun just short of out of control.
Bassist Catherine Popper and drummer Matt Burr alternated between laying down solid rock grooves on the up tempo stuff and soulful and sensitive supportive patterns and lines on the slower songs. As a band that plays incredibly well as a unit, they took already great songs and turned them into semi-spiritual, multi-orgasmic, paradigm-shifting, mind-altering inner trips with a shared outer physical expression. They definitely took the audience along for the ride.
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals left town on their tour bus with their gear following behind, but they left nothing in the tank and everything on the VENUE stage in a classic rock performance. This is what rock is supposed to be, on any stage of any size in any town from any band. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals delivered it!
|