Concert Review: Haunted Summer Animate Knitting Factory
Imagine if Donnie Darko made bedroom pop, and you would get Haunted Summer. Defined as the type of dreamy pop music that feels as texturized as the mattress you will lie on and close your eyes to listen to it. This could explain why I felt so sleepy listening to Haunted Summer at Knitting Factory. Yes, I know “sleepy” does not seem like a compliment or the proper reaction to a concert. Yet, when someone achieves a certain, cozied level of serenity, you feel like your body is weighing down how high your spirit has gotten.
Playing off their newest record, Spirit Guides, each song of theirs felt like a meeting with one. Spirit Guides, by definition, are the human souls that intuitively guide you through life. Even though we cannot see them or, necessarily feel them, they spark that gut feeling that assures we are not alone in our experiences, which means we can/ have to do better. Tracks like, “Every Step”, “One Day”, and “Sour Grapes” mold your mind like clay, while they create the many wise figures you have met that have pushed you to be better. Yet, after that concert, I felt like Bridgette Moody had been one of my spirit guides.
Once again, I am going to give a weird compliment; Moody’s voice is ethereally strange. It is like a beautiful notch in a logic board, that you can twist and make turn into any effect you desire. She can fuzz, spike, ebb, glow, smooth, and straighten her vocals as if they were visual choices, which is perfect for Haunted Summer’s “bedroom vibes”. She bops and contorts her arms as if they are branches reacting to the treed verses of songs such as,“Killing Me” and “Spirit Guides”. Their songs truly felt haunted, and their lyrics past through like ghosts trying to remind you that they are still in your home. In perspective, lyrics are supposed to be the emblems and sparks of human thought. Thus, in giving their music a phantasmic quality, they, inadvertently reveal that our thoughts are like or connect to our “spirit guides” because they, too, are intuitive.
I know that when you think “ghosts”, you may think frightful, but the genius of Haunted Summer is that they show the supernatural is natural. Their animated arrangements are not at all ghoulish as much as mystical and observant. You feel warped by their sound, which is why their concert becomes an “out of body experience”. Every chord and key is pressed to send out a vibration that reaches your soul, and pushes you to define yourself more than your materiality. Yes, I know that sounds deep, but Haunted Summer are seeking depth in the lightest way: spiritually. After all, your soul weighs nothing. For Information On Haunted Summer Click Here.
