Pulling Back the Curtain

Any way you look at it, tonight was a stellar opportunity to hear music in the capital city. There was Folk Fest, Acme Thunderer Label launch at Gallery 5, Built to Spill at the National, Diamond Center house show in Oregon Hill. And my choice, the Triple Stamp show at the Camel.

Any Triple Stamp show is worth taking in because of the quality of the musicians on their label, but tonight there was the added bonus of a reunion show by the too-long absent Mermaid Skeletons.

Yes, the same Mermaid Skeletons who seared a permanent place in my heart a few summers back with a memorable show in the garden of the Poe Museum on a sticky hot night where fans surrounded the garden to listen to the sold-out show.

They were preceded by the always-excellent Ophelia, minus their drummer and, for a change, Grant on guitar and David on bass and banjo. For several of my friends, it was their first Ophelia show and they were as impressed as I'd assured them they'd be.

Mermaid Skeletons, they of the many members, entrancing music and beautiful/silly lyrics, took the stage to a capacity crowd. When you haven't played for a few years, the devoted gather in droves. Tonight no one had to climb a pointed stone wall to see the band, but the enthusiasm to hear that distinctive sound was just as great.

During Homemade Knives's set, Will got almost four songs in before remembering to acknowledge his stage fright, a rarity for a guy who usually opens their set with panic attack talk. His voice, as ever, was as stirring on older original material as it was on an Otis Redding cover learned for a recent wedding.

Last but certainly not least, was Anousheh Khalili, a member of Homemade Knives, but doing her own thing along with drum and bass. Hers was the loudest set, relatively speaking, and the combination of her keyboards and voice did justice to the 80s-influenced new songs she was playing.

It was a truly mesmerizing show start to finish and the fact that the Camel was just as crowded at the start of the evening as it was at midnight was tribute to the brilliance of the Triple Stamp bill.

An unexpected highlight of the evening was meeting one of my most regular blog commenters who came to the show with a mutual friend. Owing to some music opining I had done for him, he was in my debt for a good tequila, so after the show we went around the corner to Balliceaux to settle up.

Satisfyingly, he turned out to be as big a music geek as I am, and it's always a pleasure to talk to those as obsessed as oneself. He has the added fortune of actually being a musician, so technically he's probably even more obsessed, a fact I almost envy. After discovering our mutual fandom for Beach House, bartender Austin made it so by playing the album.

My only concern is that now that he's met the person behind the curtain, he won't be nearly as fascinated by my ramblings.

And you can imagine how much I'd hate to lose a clever commenter. After all, it's the hope that my writing will engage someone enough to cause them to comment that makes all of this worthwhile in the first place.

Conversation, whether virtual or face-to-face, is always the objective with me. Nothing like stating the obvious.