Last night I was fortunate enough to attend The Arcs’ first of two live shows at the historic Vic Theatre. This was one of those few shows where I have no clue what it could possibly offer, given the fact that while we all know Dan Auerbach this is still a whole new band, so we the crowd are left to wonder just how the performers are attempting to wow us. I want to use this forum right now to tell whoever’s reading this: The Arcs are just a glorious as you could ever hope they would be and their live show is well worth every penny.
First let’s focus on Auerbach. While the songwriting with this collection of songs doesn’t steer too far away from what we hear on The Black Keys material, with themes generally revolving around love lost and despair or even the odd ballad or two, Dan Auerbach the frontman was completely different with The Arcs from how I’ve seen him with his more famous group. Maybe it was the fact that he feels much more at home performing in a venue like The Vic over the United Center, the latter being where he’d be expected to play with the Keys, but the man absolutely transformed himself into a whole new being last night. The man had a sort of tender swagger to him, bouncing from side to side of the stage with a reserved bravado that was always on the cusp of bursting out without ever getting too far.
The set in itself was a real force. It all felt like it was the score to a Quentin Tarantino film: aggressive, menacing, emotive, sometimes even serene, but overall just plain badass and sexy! Auerbach’s playing that night was a fine example of why anyone would dub him “Auerbae,” but the rest of his crew weren’t too far behind either. The band did their thing and there was,of course, that expected/justified “je ne sais quoi” quality to them, but it was the trio of backup singers that really stole show for me. The three ladies were clad in pseudo mariachi outfits and they were everything but just backup singers. They played guitar and violin parts, they delivered epic vocals that even the biggest of Auerbach/Black Keys/Arcs fans would be compelled to admit that they beat their lead singer’s, and the vocalist on the left end at one point did the schmurda dance. The schmurda dance!! The combination of all of the elements that the backup vocalists was all so sexy; not in a bodies pressed against bodies on the set of a Nelly video sexy, but more like a “everything you do is magic” kind of sexy.
In short, I liked it.
See some clips below.
A video posted by Pursuit Of Dopeness (@pursuitofdopeness) on
