Broken Fences

It's amazing how often there is a single show on any given night that you really should be at.  Sometimes it's easy to know what that is.  A cd release maybe, or three really good bands at the same show.  Sometimes it's hard to find.

Last night (friday night)  I didn't know where to go.  I went to www.pghcitypaper.com, and glanced through every single show listing.  I saw a couple of acts I recognized and none I wanted to see.  So I turned to facebook.  I looked at my events... and my friends' events... nothing. 


SO MUCH CRAP to sift through.  To find the gem you're looking for.  It was so much worse when I first started going to shows, because I didn't even know what I was looking for.  i would look up every act advertised in the city paper and see if they had any music online... it took a long time.  That's how I found Ben Shannon@the map room.  Ben Shannon=awesome.  Map room=noisy restaurant where good musicians play for tips to an audience who really came for a meal and don't care.

Finally I saw a thread where one fb friend said to another fb friend... are you going to see Broken Fences tonight at club cafe?  Turns out they were opening for someone else and weren't prominently named on the event.  So I went.  I guess it's possible I missed a better show, but don't think so.

I really like Broken Fences. (brokenfencesband.com) Morgan Erina has a voice that just floats in the air in front of her... beautiful, ethereal, and yet grounded in this irony of never quite opening her mouth...like her words are half asleep.  Two acoustic guitars and Simon and Garfunkel harmonies and it's this intentional simplicity... with a toy piano touch of quirk. 

They played last night to a crowd that didn't deserve them.  I have no idea if they believe the night to have been a success... the completely forgettable bands that followed certainly got the crowd involved more... but that's pgh for you.  Part of the problem is the venue.  Club cafe is one of the worst listening spaces in Pgh.  Any conversation on the bar side of the room is amplified as loudly as any band.  That combined with the $6 drafts makes me avoid it as much as possible... but it does have good shows pretty often and is home to acousticafe, so you can't avoid it completely.

But Broken Fences is worth braving a snowy south side to hang with noisy people in an expensive venue.