Too Drunk to Encore: Among Wolves, Brown Bird, Paul Masson and the Great American Canyon Band at the Metro Gallery, Dec. 3
There are two things you’re just about guaranteed to get plenty of at an Among Wolves show: 1) great songs, and 2) drunken members of the band hilariously taunting and interrupting each other between them. On Friday night at the Metro Gallery, when singer/guitarist Billy Tiedeken noted that a song they were about to play was off the band’s long-awaited second album, drummer Jason Butcher retorted, “Didn’t you say that a year ago, the last time we played here? And the year before that too?”
At the risk of encouraging any further delays, it’s worth noting that Among Wolves is one of the most urgently must-see live bands in Baltimore right now, in part because the fantastic songs the guys have been playing the last few years still aren’t available on a recording.
Three of the four members of Among Wolves write and sing lead, and in the course of their 45-minute set, Tiedeken, Butcher, and pianist Jimmy Cahill took turns at the microphone, each with his own distinctive voice and songwriting style, while Dave Godman switched between bass and drums to accommodate the varying instrumental configurations. Though it’s tempting to pigeonhole Among Wolves as a roots-rock band with a wealth of twang in its riffs, the members just as frequently tackle piano-driven power pop or noisy, angular modern rock, and at no point do they ever fail to pull it off. The small audience packed into the Metro Gallery was sufficiently appreciative of what a great show it had witnessed, but the band members confessed they were just too drunk to comply with requests for an encore.
The opening acts filled out the bill with a complementary selection of rootsy acts. Paul Masson and the Great American Canyon Band had a full-bodied sound befitting the name, but Masson’s voice never quite cut through the mix and the tunes weren’t especially memorable. Brown Birds, an acoustic combo that had driven down from Rhode Island, featured banjo and upright bass, but it was more the killer vocal harmonies and creative, unpredictable arrangements that made for a surprise highlight of an excellent night.
