Students left the Rathskeller with their ears still ringing after watching stellar performances from The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, A Film In Color and Ex Wife on Friday, March 28.
The show kicked off with the Bergen County, N.J., ambient instrumental band, A Film In Color.
Guitarist Alex Lee, bassist Eric Scholz and drummer Josh Alberg played songs off their EP To Scale A Mountain, which was released this March.
The set started with the lights off over the stage and audio playing of muffled hospital noises. An EKG beep grew faster and faster until it flat-lined, causing the lights to go up and the band to erupt in sound.
The music gave off an eerily beautiful vibe with Lee’s heavy use of a distortion pedal and dramatic movements around the stage.
Next up was Ex Wife, a trio from New Brunswick, N.J. The band consisted of Phil Connor on his baby blue bass, Matt Harvey on blood-red drums and Nick Bolton on vocals and black baritone guitar.
The band considers themselves to be shoegaze, a subgenre of alternative rock that uses a significant amount of guitar effects mixed in with indistinguishable vocals.
They played “Rituals,” “Sleepwalker” and “June” off of their 2013 LP New Colors and 2011 EP June.
The set featured numerous guitar solos and in one instance Bolton played so hard his glasses fell off.
The night’s headliner, The World Is A Beautiful Place, got fans out of their seats and flocking to the front of the stage.
The indie rock and emo band has nine members, including Derrick Shanholtzer-Dvorak, Tyler Bussey and Chris Teti on guitar and vocals, Julia Peters on cello, Steven Buttery on drums, Josh Cyr on bass, David Bello on vocals, Chris Zizzamia performing spoken-word poetry and Katie Shanholtzer-Dvorak on keyboard and vocals.
The members seemed to move in perfect unison on the crowded stage, each a vital part of the musical machine.
The band, hailing from Willimantic, Conn., performed the songs “Getting Soda” and “Victim Kin Seek Suit” off their 2013 album Whenever, If Ever and 2010 EP Formlessness, both featuring a slow, melancholy sound.
They will be touring in Europe throughout April with Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate).
