Wednesday night The New Year made a rare appearance at Spaceland in Silverlake as part of a four show West Coast tour that seems to be all the band will be playing all year. I felt pretty lucky to be seeing them for my second time as I have friends in other parts of the country who have never had the pleasure of seeing them. They rarely tour, and, when they do, they only play a handful of cities.
The evening started with a short set from local LA band Timonium. Unfortunately I only caught the tail end of it so I didn’t get to shoot it. What I did get to see though was great & their spacey sound set a nice tone for the evening. After their set ended, 20 or so young twenty-somethings crowded in front the stage in anticipation of
David Bazan (formerly of Pedro The Lion). Bazan performend an entirely solo acoustic set made up of his newer solo material as well as a couple of Pedro tracks thrown in. He also performed a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Man In Me”, a Deerhoof cut from Apple O & an emotional rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. After he finished, some of the younger crowd left and I moved up to the stage to settle in for the gig.
