Kishi Bashi at The Earl, March 14, 2013

Kishi Bashi played to a packed, sold-out Earl last night.  He played 529 last summer, but on a Monday (so I missed him), and he played MFNW 2012 at the Doug Fir, but I got talked into going out to Troutdale, Oregon to see My Morning Jacket at McMenninin's at Edgefield.  As it turns out, the third time was the charm.  

But before he performed, the set was opened by the charming Elizabeth and the Catapult.

The Catapult is actually just Elizabeth Ziman, but that's all that's needed, as she sings beautifully and selects her songs carefully, including last night's cover of Dawes' When My Time Comes.  She was fighting off a cold but still both played and sang remarkably well between her sniffles, and used her not inconsiderable personal charm to totally win over the audience.

Elizabeth eventually invited Tall Tall Trees (Mike Savino) to come on stage and join her for a few songs.  The two are actually Kishi Bashi's tour band, so it was basically just Kishi without the Bashi (Bashi without the Kishi?)

There was only a short break between sets before Kishi Bashi took the stage, performing solo at first before being joined on stage by Elizabeth and the Catapult and Tall Tall Trees.

Mr. Bashi is known primarily for playing bright, cheery pop, most notably the song Bright Whites which you've probably heard by now in a Windows 8 commercial.  What surprised me during his over-60-minute set was the variety of musics he played, ranging from his signature pop to a fiddle-and-banjo bluegrass showdown with Tall Tall Trees, to some Bela Fleck-style jazz, hip-hop beat boxing, and even some noise rock and looped feedback freak outs.  In fact, he kicked into the instantly recognizable opening lines of Bright Whites after an extended jam with Tall Tall Trees, creating a perfect collision of the sequential and  the purely veridical.

Use of a repeater pedal to create on-stage loops is common by now, and I've seen plenty of artists create sonic textures and complex backing sounds to accompany their own playing (e.g., Owen Pallet, Dustin Wong, etc.).  But no one is the maestro of the technique that Kishi Bashi is, and beyond just having an interesting technical approach, he creates music that is fun, joyous, and consistently interesting to listen to.

The bow tie came off midway through the set for what he jokingly called Kishi Bashi After Dark.  

Overall, this might have been the most fun set since David Byrne and Annie Clark brought Love This Giant to the Cobb Energy Center, and the most musically satisfying since Calexico and Yo La Tengo at the Buckhead Theater.