Christina Leary - The Head and The Heart Performance

October 2nd, 2017
Christina Leary - The Head and The Heart Performance
Last night I got to attend a concert in Richmond. My friend and I went to see The Head and The Heart at The National. The Head and The Heart are a sort of folk pop band. They have a really great female singer with a unique voice and a very talented pianist. My favorite part about going to concerts isn’t so much the music as it is hearing the artist tell stories about their songs. I like when they give a little insight into the inspiration or experience behind the lyrics and the sound.
If I was ranking this experience among my other concert experiences I would rank it probably a 5/10. I’m not sure if it was because of the venues acoustics or not, but I could barely hear the female singer whose voice I love so much. She also did not have the best stage presence perhaps because they were performing songs mostly from their newest album, which was expected, and her voice is not feature as much on the second album as it is on the first album. Still when she performed their two hit songs from the first album only one was really great. In all fairness when she hit it, she really hit it, but if she could sustain it that would make her a really great vocalist. Her performance of their one song, River and Roads, she stole the show and demanded attention because her voice really told the story of the song, the angst in her I could feel in my chest. It was really fantastic. I really do think this happened in part because there was a story coming out of her, one she necessarily did not need to narrate before performing the song. That was a really strong aspect of their performance.
My other favorite song was done in the ironically expected encore. It was a solo song  by the pianist. It was a self written song, not on any of their albums, so I had no idea what the lyrics were, how the song sounded, etc. I knew the lyrics in the moment and the sound was amazing. I think the venue is better suited for solo artists because everything sounded much more clear when he was out on the stage alone and his talent was really highlighted. I think this played into why it was one of my favorite but also because it was the only song the whole entire show that they gave an intro into. Contrasting this with one of my favorite concerts, Bruce Springsteen, who gave an intro into nearly every song he performed. Anyways, he started out by saying that it is very hard for him to come back to Richmond because it has a lot of memories and friends that he doesn’t get to see that much anymore. He lived there for some years before the band really took off and moved to Seattle.  Furthermore, he said he gets especially nervous performing in Richmond which I thought was very cool. I’m not sure exactly what he said but I remember how I felt when he was leading up to the song with the story and how I felt during the song, which became a part of the storytelling process.

Based off both of these things I believe all forms of art have this storytelling aspect, it is very easy to see in drama and music but more difficult to see in art. However, I want to be weary of using the phrase “storytelling” it has become a very popular idea and is now a part of the larger public sphere and because of this I think its meaning has been watered down a bit. Art should focus on depth storytelling whereas something like marketing focuses on very shallow storytelling, which isn’t bad if it is a formula that works, I’m just asserting that the two should be different. I am wondering though if storytelling is more impactful of the artist gives an intro to the song, play, or dance like I have suggested in this blog. Or if the mystery of not knowing makes art more impactful for someone because they get to be a part of the creative process? If an artist tells the story behind his work how does that change the ability of the audience to be a part of the creation of meaning?

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