On Thursday, September 13 at Trees in Deep Ellum, Twin Shadow headlined with two openers, and the place was packed, frankly with good reason too.
The first act of the night was local artist New Fumes, who’s brief set felt somewhat mismatched for the following bands of the show. Regardless of awkward placement, Daniel Huffman, the sole member of the New Fumes project, played his time well. Armed with foot pedals, a guitar, a goat mask, and a projector system showing off weird psychedelic images in the background, Huffman managed to stir the crowd to some degree. To his credit, if he was opening up for an act like Animal Collective or Neon Indian, the crowd would have went nuts for his odd off-kilter melodies and curious loops.
After the departure of New Fumes, Niki & The Dove (a group surprisingly consisting of no avian member but instead of two delightful Swedish individuals, Malin Dahlström and Gustaf Karlöf) came onto the stage of Trees beaming at the crowd that had collected for them. The duo wasted zero time in playing their most dance heavy and emotional tracks of their album Instinct, and all those who did not previously dance, danced. Malin screeched vocals and wooed the crowd as Gustaf successfully handled most, if not all during some songs, of the instrumentation. Niki & The Dove played an excellent set, ending on a high note with “The Drummer.” Note: most of the crowd near the front of the stage was made of homosexual men, and if the emphasis on how much dancing there was is not clear due to the demographic of the crowd, you must have never seen gay men dance at a concert.
At this point, the crowd grew very thick, as a large mass had gathered to see Twin Shadow during a large break in between the final and penultimate act. At long last, the band emerged. George Lewis Jr. (the man that is Twin Shadow) came to the stage with his touring group. Sharply dressed, George Lewis Jr. spoke at the front of the audience thanking the crowd for coming while all swooned at the musician’s charm and good looks. Twin Shadow played many songs off of his latest album, Confess, but the tracks that really set fire to the excited crowd were ones off of his previous effort, Forget, such as a version of “Castles In the Snow” with an extended rock-and-dance-your-face-off jam at the end. Lewis Jr., in fact, was very fond of adjusting his own songs on stage in a pleasant rock star fashion, like when he chanted the lyrics, “sometimes it tires, so slow,” for a good minute before he finally did play “Slow.” The band was obviously having a good time playing for everyone, and at one point Lewis Jr. pointed out how many people did attend this concert unlike the smaller crowd that showed up at Granada for his last performance. For the entirety of Twin Shadow’s set, the swooning and grooving never ceased.
