Last night I took my girlfriend to the Kishi Bashi show at the TLA.

I saw him a few years ago at Union Transfer. He was opening for his old band, of Montreal, and I was totally blown away. I don’t mean that in the way everyone, including me, says it after they see a concert. Every time anyone sees a reasonably good concert, it feels like the best thing they’ve ever seen. But Kishi Bashi is different.

The first time I saw him perform, he managed to do things with music that I had never heard before. He’s a violinist and singer, mainly. But he uses his violin voice with effects and loops. He’ll beatbox into the mic, loop it, then build a violin rhythm off of that, then loop and speed that track up to create an abstract backing to a song he improvs. His entire set was like that, with the exception of a few songs that had been prearranged, but even those were shockingly expansive and innovative. When I got home, I immediately bought and downloaded his debut album, 151a, only to be disappointed. On the studio recordings, none of the grand sound landscapes present in the live show were there. There was only his voice, some (very talented, though traditional) violin with minimal effects, and a drum machine. It was nothing like what I’d heard the night before.

When I saw he was coming to the TLA, I knew I needed to see him again. He’s one of the most talented live performers in music today, and tickets to his concert were only $16. He was touring this time around with a 3-piece band backing him up: a bass guitar, banjo, keyboard, and drums. His second album, which was released a few weeks ago, Lighght, definitely sounded better than his debut. It had more songs that sounded like hits. They were still brilliant compositions, but now that he had a band’s worth of instruments to work with, they sounded a little more like the music an indie band would produce (though it remained unique to Kishi Bashi’s style). I really liked the album. It was still nothing like the live show I’d seen, but there was enough of his genius visible to keep me listening to it on repeat.

I was worried that the more traditional band structure would limit his live show.

Boy, was I wrong.

The live renditions of his newer songs with his band were all heavy on improvisation, Kishi Bashi’s beatboxing mesmerizing violin melodies, and introduced a new element, similarly impressive improv by Tall Tall Trees, the band’s banjo player. From the collaborations they played side by side to the things Kishi Bashi said during his set, it’s clear Tall Tall Trees has helped Kishi Bashi transform they way he works with a multiple-person performace. In short, the new material was able to escape the limited sounds of the studio recording and create something gripping. Some of the songs were changed radically, while others, like the intimate “Q&A,” a song if special importance to me and my girlfriend, spoke for themselves without any added aspects.

Some of his older songs, like “Bright Whites,” were reworked into performances with the full band, to similar effect. But it was the end of the set that brought back the emotions of his earlier solo shows for me. The last 4 songs were played without the full band. A pre-debut Kishi Bashi song, “Evelyn, Summer Has Arrived,” was played by just Kishi Bashi and Tall Tall Trees, and blew the crowd away. The last 3 songs were then played as solos by K. “Bitersweet Genesis for Him AND Her,” a highly conceptual song off of the new album sounded massive in the small hall, and it was the first time most of the audience had heard the kind of shocking sonic landscape that K. is capable of producing all on his own.

At that point, it was clear that “Manchester” and “I Am the Antichrist to You” had to be the two final songs. Before “Manchester” came on, K. asked a fan who had written in to him to come up to the stage. He explained that the couple had been brought together by the song, and right there, on the stage, the guy proposed to his girlfriend, who accepted. Then, K. performed a beautiful version of “Manchester.” You can see a small clip from the performance below.

Afterwards, “I Am the Antichrist to You,” the oddly named love song, closed out the night. This was the song that caught my attention when I first saw Kishi Bashi. He came close to opening with it that night. Now, it’s clear that his audience has come to love it, and so it was perfect to be played last. It was just as lovely as I remember it.

All in all, I can’t understate how impressed I was with the show. Kishi Bashi is an experience, and a bargain at that, that should be experienced by everyone if they have the chance. It’s a far different affair than any concert I’ve ever seen. Even the spectacular Vampire Weekend show I witness at the Barclay’s Center last fall didn’t come close to capturing the audience the way K. does the second he jumps into a melody.

This was originally published on my blog at post.ryanoshea.com.