The Hollywood Bowl is nothing if not an exquisite stage on which to showcase great music. KCRW did its part to uphold that reputation by bringing together Sylvan Esso and Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit to co-headline a picturesque July Sunday night at the iconic venue in Los Angeles.
At first glance, these two acts would seem strange bedfellows on the same marquee. The former is an electro-pop band, the latter a country outfit whose sound vacillates between the folk and rock/Americana sides of the genre. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find some surprising synergies between them.
For one, both hail from the American South—Sylvan Esso from North Carolina, Jason Isbell from Alabama. Each act has earned recognition at the highest levels of music, with Sylvan Esso garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and Jason taking home four of the awards over the course of his illustrious career.
More importantly (and most strikingly), these two bands share a kinship in the subject matter of their music. They both sing of love, loss, and longing, along with all manner of tragedy and tribulation. It’s just that one does so to high-energy, danceable beats, while the other croons over twangy riffs that are accessible even to audiences beyond country.
For Sylvan Esso, the show was a grand opportunity to exhibit their evolution into an exploratory powerhouse of bass music. On the one hand, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Durham-based duo’s eponymous debut album. On the other, Sylvan Esso were also winding down their tour in support of their latest album, 2022’s No Rules Sandy.
Together, those two albums comprised the majority of Sylvan Esso’s 17-song setlist. They bookended their hour and 15 minutes onstage with “Alarm” and “Echo Party” off the new LP, and clocked in “How Did You Know” and “Cloud Walker” during the second half. Meanwhile, their initial album accounted for the second and second-to-last songs, by way of “Dreamy Bruises” and “Coffee”, and contributed “Dress”, “Uncatena”, and “Hey Mami” to the proceedings in between.
Along the way, Sylvan Esso plucked prime tracks from 2017’s What Now and 2020’s Free Love. The former was responsible for a trio of tracks—”Kick Jump Twist”, “Die Young”, and “Radio”—each of which managed to draw members of an otherwise mellow crowd out of their seats to dance. The latter, meanwhile, chipped in more than a few womps to a bass-filled affair, courtesy of “Ferris Wheel”, “Train”, “Frequency”, and “Numb”.
At every point, the minimalist magic of Sylvan Esso was on glorious display. Lead singer Amelia Meath serenaded the crowd with her soft, silky vocals while encouraging everyone to move to the music with her gyrating hips. Her work in the upper register was a well-crafted complement to the work of producer Nick Sanborn, whose locks flowed along as his head banged to the group’s bass-heavy beats.
The vibes shifted swiftly once Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit took the stage. Gone were the flashing lights and womping womps, replaced by a more traditional band with a less flashy visual arrangement.
That said, the music was no less impactful. Between his searingly sincere singing and supremely skilled guitar work, Isbell proved himself to be not only an outstanding frontman, but an artist more than worthy of a venue as legendary as the Hollywood Bowl.
He and his supporting cast drew heavily from their latest album, 2023’s Weathervanes. Each of those contributions made clear why that record was (and still is) so critically acclaimed.
“When We Were Close” served as a fitting, rock-oriented introduction to the country set. After drawing “Stockholm” and “Live Oak” from his solo repertoire and the beloved “Alabama Pines” off 2011’s Here We Rest, Jason and company dove back into their newer material with a run of “Middle of the Morning”, “Strawberry Woman”, and “King of Oklahoma”.
Jason exchanged his electric guitar for an acoustic one to meet the sentimental moment of “If We Were Vampires” and held onto it as he strummed through “Overseas”. He and The 400 Unit finished what would have been the end of the set with “This Ain’t It”, also off the most recent album, and Jason’s own “Cover Me Up”. Rather than step offstage and return for another shower of applause, however, Jason and company skipped the encore theatrics and went straight to a finishing stretch of “Cast Iron Skillet”, “Traveling Alone”, and “Miles”.
All told, Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit acquitted themselves spectacularly, and claimed a spot among the ranks of other country-oriented acts like Chris Stapleton and Noah Kahan that have graced the Bowl’s iconic shell this summer. For them, it was just the latest in a long line of performances that’s slated to include many a stadium and arena across North America until November, when their scheduled to tour through Europe and the United Kingdom.
As for Sylvan Esso, they won’t be quite so easy to spot. They’ll play just two shows in August: in Beech Mountain, NC and at Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco. KCRW, meanwhile, has plenty of exciting curations left on the Hollywood Bowl’s summer calendar. The famed L.A. radio station is putting its heft behind Jamrock Reggae Night on August 4th, with brothers Stephen Marley and Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley headlining. The following weekend, KCRW Festival will feature two nights of Khruangbin and Unknown Mortal Orchestra going back-to-back. After that will come two more double-headers—Mt. Joy and Local Natives on August 25th and Vance Joy and GROUPLOVE on September 8th—before a stylistic switch-up in time for Noche de Cumbia on September 22nd. Head to the venue’s website to view all upcoming programming, and visit Sylvan Esso and Jason Isbell‘s websites for their upcoming tour dates.
The post Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit, Sylvan Esso Combine For Eclectic Spectacle At Hollywood Bowl [Photos/Videos] appeared first on L4LM.
