Saturday night, Cambridge, Mass. folk band You Won’t proved that a concert in the Undergrounds Coffeehouse can be both intimate and energetic.
You Won’t’s two members, Josh Arnoudse and Raky Sastri, released their first LP, “Skeptic Goodbye,” in February 2012. With their minimalist sets and abstract, sometimes psychedelic lyrics, they resemble the bands in the Elephant 6 collective, a group of American musicians who ultimately formed several notable indie rock bands in the 1990s, such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal.The band toured with the Lumineers last year and will again in Canada at the end of April and in May.
The band plays a balanced combination of intimate folk songs about love and memory, like “Remember When” and “Realize,” and ballads about the same subjects, like “Who Knew” and “Television.” Their April 13 show included songs from “Skeptic Goodbye,” along with a few new ones.
“I would like them to release the ‘Lonely Fuck’ song,” said Michelle Lepkofker, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law.
Opening the show was Walnut Tree Grove, a student bluegrass band. Transferring from the mellow mood of bluegrass to the blistering spirit of You Won’t led to a slow start. When You Won’t started to play, the entire audience sat on the floor. After the first song, Arnoudse helped the audience adjust by suggesting they stand.
“Before, I felt like I was singing to a group of half people,” Arnoudse said. “It’s nice to see you all in your full form.”
About three-quarters through the show, the band stepped down from the stage and asked the audience to form a circle — “the more circular, the better,” as Arnoudse said — and got in the middle. Then, if they weren’t already, things got weird. Sastri and Arnoudse whipped out instruments as strange and varied as wind chimes, a harmonium and a handsaw (played with a bow), to an astonishingly beautiful and cohesive effect. Singing lyrics to the ceiling from atop a chair and switching instruments between songs, You Won’t finally connected to the audience.
Stepping down from the stage and playing among the audience is a trick You Won’t learned from fellow bands that they’ve toured with. It’s an effective way to get the audience’s attention at smaller venues, where people might talk among their friends instead of listening to the music.
“It’s a nice way to take down the barrier,” Arnoudse said.
You Won’t rarely plays any covers in their shows, but they made an exception for this one and played “Sixteen” by friend Gideon Irving (Sastri was featured on Irving’s album, “My Brother Is Isaac”). Irving, like You Won’t, likes to keep his shows small-scale and intimate. He only performs at houses and, in 2012, toured all of New Zealand by playing 80 house shows, carrying around his instruments in a trailer attached to the bicycle he rode. “Sixteen” is an expansive ballad of youth and its struggles, drawing together the pull of destiny, the unfair expectations of parents and the perils of watching too much television.
While Arnouse led the singing, he admitted that Sastri could play more instruments. His talent did not go unnoticed by Kendall Pipitone, a sophomore majoring in accounting.
“I love Raky’s passion,” she said. “And I want to be his passion.”