Young the Giant – Home of the Strange
Thursday, September 8th, Young the Giant played a show at Pittsburgh’s Stage AE along with openers Ra Ra Riot. Still on the beginning of their tour, both bands were super high energy and put on an incredibly fun show.
I like both of these bands. I only know a song or two from Ra Ra Riot, and I know a decent amount from Young the Giant. Neither are categorized under my “favorite band,” but, they both have great music. However, maybe it was to do with the sound system vs. where I was standing, or maybe he’s just got a mumbly voice, but the lead singer, Wes Miles, was tough to understand. On top of this, a lot of the songs had a very very similar sound. Now, maybe this is just because I haven’t listened to all of their music, but it was tough to really say what was different from one song to the next. UNTIL they played Water. Water was awesome—it was the second to last song, and it had a much different feel than the rest of the songs. I’m not trying to rag on Ra Ra Riot, they were great, this was just my impression. (The bassist was cute though).
Young the Giant, though, was absolutely amazing. Being up in the press pit was crazy—Sameer is an amazing singer and musician and he was so lively and amusing as an entertainer. Sometimes, you go to see bands perform, and they just play their music. Sameer definitely puts on a show that is worth seeing live. All of the members of Young the Giant were just so good—you can tell they all love what they do. The lighting highlighted the music perfectly— it danced around the backdrop (featuring the mountain from the Home of the Strange album cover) creating an incredible light show of its own along with tiny sparkles of light dispersed among it. Hearing the audience sing along with some their hits Cough Syrup, Mind Over Matter, Apartment, and My Body was magical, but no more magical than the silence of newer songs like Silvertongue and Something To Believe In. There’s no way to rightfully capture what this concert was like in words, so I would suggest anyone (Young the Giant superfan or not) to catch a show from this tour if possible. Great show. Great great show.
