All photos: Greg Szeto

Avocado Happy Hour provide another interpretation in what may be the boom-genre of 2009: precious instrumental music.  The word precious comes to mind immediately with the twinkling glockenspiel and warm melodies.  They showed they have some adventurous ideas and inspiration, distributing a crate of bells to the audience for their first song.  All of their songs seem to have a somnambullic quality to them, at times sounding like a infant’s music mobile that is stammering while running out of juice, yet still struggling to accomplish its task of transporting you into dreamland.  This is likely owed to the glockenspiel dropping notes in an irregular pitter-patter in patterns of early rain.  

Unfortunately, each song seems to take a bit too long growing and developing, not enough happening to sustain interest early-on as they build each layer.  But it is worth it to hang on, because the finished tapestry is remarkably good; look no farther than the latter halves of “Mushroom” and “Seamore.”  ”Positano Prelude” and “Grilled Cheese” don’t really ever find their footing in an engaging way for me; it seems they need to refine their alchemy of instrumental voices a bit further to figure out just how much is needed of each to produce more tracks like “Mushroom.”

Avocado Happy Hour
The Ottobar
Baltimore, MD
January 14, 2009

Band:
Amanda Schmidt-Rhodes piano, glockenspiel, and keyboards
Rod Hamilton-vibraphone, drums, and percussion

Source: Peluso CEMC6/ck4(cards)>PS-2>AD-20>NJB3
Transfer: NJB3>PC>SF-7>Wav>FLAC
Taper: Jeff Mewbourn (jm292@yahoo.com)

Notes:

Download the full set as a ZIP file formatted in: FLAC or MP3

Stream MP3s and photos from the show after the jump. Read the rest…

Read the rest…