Gayngs: The Last Prom On Earth
By: Joe Toeben
Gayngs is a collective of musicians from Minnesota and Wisconsin. Mostly notably they are Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), P.O.S. and Dessa (Doomtree), and members of Megafaun. Starting as just a small project, Gayngs eventually grew out of a bedroom and into the studio where the sessions became more frequent. The sound is a mix of something that you could call indie/electronica/soul/pop/weird/jam. With more than 20 members to its name it is easy to say that while this collective very talented it is also very shadowed in its own members talents. There was 2 shows for the concert dubbed as “The Last Prom On Earth” for First Ave, one at 5pm and another at 10pm for 21+ only. For the first show there was not an opening band so instead of the show starting at 6pm as indicated on the tickets it started at 7pm which is probably when they would have taken stage after an opening band would have finished.
During the entire set there were at least 7 people on stage all the time. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and drummer Joe Westerlund were the only 2 band members that remained on the stage the entire time. While the music itself is fantastic, the live performance was slightly askew. My reason for saying this was they didn’t have the music properly mixed with certain leads and lines not having enough volume for example. There was one song were they had their 3 song birds in the front of the stage singing and you couldn’t heard anything besides the beats coming from the Macbook in the back and the voice of the keyboardist. Along with that there was just too much activity on the stage and too many elements to the music to be able to effectively understand, enjoy and reflect on the performance. At some points there were at least 5 people singing at one time, and while that it’s a bad thing it just seems to take away from the sound if you are trying to focus on one persons voice. Overall it was an enjoyable show to some but to others it wasn’t. It was a worthy experience and worth it if you went to see members of Doomtree or Bon Iver. If you’re a fan of upfront, non-experimental music do yourself a favor and skip this project over.
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/gayngs
