AroarA, Alex Lukashevsky - St. George the Martyr Music Gallery (Sept 5/13)

AroarA have quickly won me over. They played a similar set to the one I've become accustomed to with a few additional tracks from the album being released on this evening. Andrew primarily played his electric guitar but was also in charge of queueing up the backing tracks and drums while Ariel started on her cigar-box guitar but after setting that down so it could slide into the hot, hot spotlight she rocked her electric for much of the eve. It was well into the set that that they both set down their instruments and just played the track so they could dance and sing (and kinda rap) on a tune that was quite peppy. Following this their lovely accompaniment in Leslie Feist and Danielle Gesundheit joined them to close out the set as has happened before and is akin to their Hydra formation. With all four of them rocking the guitar it made for a very strong crescendo, while on another track Andrew stepped back and allowed the women and their vocals to take center stage.

The encore saw just the original couple return and a song in French by Brigitte Fontaine before inviting the girls to return. Despite the similarities to previous sets I was still enamoured with the entire show and really enjoyed my front pew/center seating.

Things got going late with Alex Lukashevsky being introduced twice, the second time by Andrew Whiteman himself. It was rambling but glowing and so the potential was there but the set did not turn my crank. He played the guitar but seemed to lack any clear musicality for most of the songs - as if someone who had an idea of how to play just picked up a guitar at a friend's place and made an assortment of sounds with it for a few seconds. However it went on for quite awhile and was saved by Danielle (Snowblink) and another female (whose name I did not catch) who filled in the background with their voices. Mind you the song structure and timing of their input was also odd but not as odd as the assortment of sounds that they were asked to make - one sounded like we were in an aviary!