NXNE Critical Conclusions for BRAIDS (North By Northeast 2013 Concert Review)

The penultimate show on this Thursday night was by Montreal’s BRAIDS.

Venue: Comfort Zone

First Impressions: “Cool song. Oh, they’re only sound checking.” Fooled us! The venue was also compact and hot as fuck. Once they came on for real, fans were treated to Amends, which came off great in a live setting.

Stage Presence: Hard to move a lot when you’re sort of tied to your instruments. So they stood still, but looked good doing so.

Random Observation: The projections weren’t 100% clear to begin with, and weren’t helped when the curtain behind the stage fell.

Crowd Reaction: The leader of the BRAIDS fan club was right at the front, and he was one hyper guy. The rest of us were receptive and appreciative.

Water/alcohol/neither: Water for Raphaelle. The rest didn’t drink anything because they are robots?

The Last Word: 8 /10 – Loops, vocal distortion, complex and textured songs, all executed quite well live. It was really noticeable when the drums were not electronic, which was a nice switch up. Great vocals live, despite being chopped up and fed back to us.

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