Show Reviews

If you attended college in the 90’s, there’s a good chance that the bands comprising the Last Summer On Earth Tour could be heard emanating from a dorm room or apartment near you, if not from your own. There’s an album’s worth of hits to be culled from the catalogs of Cracker, Big Head Todd And The Monsters, Blues Traveler, and Barenaked Ladies, and nearly every tune was trotted out at the Raleigh tour stop. With three H.O.R.D.E. Tour alumni present, that heady time was reminisced over by more than a few attendees. But though the crowd was of a certain age and the music was nostalgic, half of the bands actually performed recent material.

Although the performance was billed as ”Gillian Welch,” it’s clearly a team effort here as David Rawlings is an essential part to their creative process, and a prominent musical partner on stage.  By flat-picking his 1935 Epiphone Olympic guitar, Rawlings, with a cowboy hat tilted down to shadow most of his face, evokes an addictive flavor of dissonance that fuels tenderness and rawness.  He also balances intensely visceral fervor with restraint, providing the songs with plenty of passion but without ever disrupting their delicacy.