Palmyra wins over the crowd at The Middle East

photo by Nicolas Hendrickson

When I entered The Middle East Upstairs on a Friday night in Cambridge to watch folk trio Palmyra play, the first thing I heard was the opener, folk singer Joseph Terrell. With a rustic, folk sound similar to Palmyra’s, he won over the audience with only his voice and acoustic guitar. He ended his set praising the band not only for their music, which he was a fan of long before he met them, but for their friendship on tour. It was the first sign of a band that makes great music and  great connection with their audience. 

If the trio made up of Sasha Landon on main vocals and guitar, Teddy Chipouras on guitar (and sometimes banjo), and Mānoa Bell on upright bass entered the stage nervously, it went straight over my head. They looked cool, calm, and collected as they began their set. A smile set on Landon’s face in the center of the stage reflected back on the crowd, which was a mainstay throughout the night. 

Starting off the way they started their album Restless, the band played  “Restless,” the lead-off to their most recent album of the same name. The song immediately struck me as less polished, more rustic, and gritty? raw ?  but even more folky than the official version on the album. This only stood to improve their sound and continued as they played songs from the album throughout the night. Though the face of the band is made up of the string-playing Virginia trio, with the addition of drums on the album and a drummer on stage, there was an added rhythm and excitement to the songs that brought the energy up in the venue.

 At a concert in early May, the eclectic crowd knew every word to the songs on Restless, an album that only came out in late March of this year. Though the catchy track “Arizona” is a standout on the album in terms of streaming numbers, every song off Restless received a warm reception from the crowd. Not to say that “Arizona,” the second song on Palmyra’s setlist, didn’t absolutely loosen up the crowd, as this was where the swaying and singing really began. But in a time in the music industry where everyone knows the singles… and not the albums, it felt especially significant that the audience was so dedicated.

Any song from the album felt elevated in the room full of, to put it very simply, happy people, and the natural sound of a live band. We’ve all been to gigs where, once the music slows down in tempo, the audience’s attention span drops with it. Only the tempo slowed when the band played their slower songs, which they jokingly referred to as “bummers,” to the delight of the giggling crowd. They showed us a more intimate side of themselves and their music with those songs, like “Shape I’m In,” and kept us just as intrigued as we were during their headbangers.

When the band called up the opener, Joseph Terell, to join them on the stage for a song, they did anything but spread out and make room. Instead, all four of them huddled around one microphone and sang like Terell had been a part of the band for years, as all four of their vocals blended beautifully. The band lingered at the microphone even after Terell and his striking voice had left the stage. Rather than a recorded album, the chemistry a band has can only really be defined by their stage presence, and Palmyra did just that. They showed the crowd that the connection they might have heard through their headphones on the album was true to real life.

A standout from the night was “Dishes,” which highlighted the relationship the band had built with the crowd. After a mini-speech on how “not fine” everything in the world feels right now, Landon delved into a song that's hook chants “It’s fine!” as an ironic reassurance that the crowd shouted back to him while clapping and stomping their feet, and none of us really believed. 

I knew going into the concert that Palmyra had released a great recorded folk album. What I left knowing is that Palmyra is a great band, with a special audience, and an amazing live sound. And of course, an album that sounds even better live, called Restless.