After the initial enthusiastic cheering died down once indie rock collective San Fermin took the stage at Thalia Hall Friday night, a silence fell over the room, the kind of silence that makes you hold your breath, the kind of silence you feel enveloping you completely. The show, celebrating ten years of the sophomore album Jackrabbit, opened with “The Woods”, a haunting melody that starts off with only piano and vocals, giving way to a more traditional rock arrangement before ending with one of the craziest baritone saxophone features in modern rock music. It was “The Woods” that first got me hooked on San Fermin, but the whole album to follow is an absolute no-skip gem, an opinion shared by the small but dedicated fan base that showed up to sing every word.
The band is led by Yale-educated composer and keyboard player Ellis Ludwig-Leone, a name as pretentious as his maximalist compositions, but there is nothing pretentious about the way he banters and laughs with the people onstage that have clearly been his best friends for a long time. “Ok, we can all go home now,” Ellis joked after they played the upbeat title track “Jackrabbit”. “We haven’t played that song in the middle of a show in years.”
When they reached what would be the first of four interludes in the album, Ellis quipped “Yeah, we’re not doing the interludes. I know none of you came to see the interludes.” As a matter of fact, Ellis, as an album purist, I did want to hear those interludes, but whatever! Keep up the great energy and give the vocalists something to do, I suppose.
Those vocalists, Allen Tate and Claire Wellin, wove lilting melodies throughout the setlist, their work equally divided. Allen had a very casual presence, in a t-shirt and jeans, almost shy but unable to minimize his distinct and incredibly rich baritone voice. Claire was radiant, playing violin much of the time she wasn’t singing. In the past she had toured with San Fermin exclusively as a violinist/backup vocalist, but she more than held her own as the leading lady.
A highlight of the night was the duet “Parasites”, an eerie but jaunty song, which had the crowd hooting and hollering by the cacophonous outro. It is an earworm that hasn’t left my head since. In that song and others, saxophone player Stephen Chen rightfully stole the show every chance he got. He put his whole body into every solo, proving that a touring band has no need for a bass player when they have a baritone sax player that can absolutely shred.
Once the album playthrough wrapped up with the closer “Billy Bibbit” and (to my delight) the b-side “No Devil”, San Fermin launched into the second half of the setlist without hesitation. The crowd danced and belted the words to some of their most popular songs like “Bride”, “Cairo”, and “Sonsick”, the latter which involved Stephen running up into an opera box to positively crush one last saxophone solo of the night. They closed with “The Living”, a song that reminds us we’re alive, something that I never feel more acutely than when singing the words with hundreds of other people reveling in the shared togetherness of live music from a beloved band.
Get tickets to San Fermin’s 10 Years of Jackrabbit Anniversary Tour here.
Check out their latest album Arms here.
all photos appear courtesy of Madi Jay for Honorable Mention Magazine
