Last Week Live: Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

Rams Head Live! was bursting with energy Monday night, and not just because the Ravens won the Super Bowl.

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals simultaneously created and fed off of that energy, dancing all over the stage and creating a frenzy every time Potter mentioned the Super Bowl win.

The concert, however, started off on a calmer note.

Houndmouth, a folk rock quartet from Indiana, opened the night with their twangy Southern sound.

Each one of the members was able to play multiple instruments and solo on their own.

They all took turns soloing, but the best song was “Houston Train,” when Katie Toupin, the group’s sole female, started off the song on her own. She has a voice that showcases both her enthusiasm for performing and her emotional connection to the lyrics she’s singing. She is able to belt very well, and her voice is strong, perhaps strong enough for her to have her own solo career someday.

The men in the band weren’t too shabby either, each showcasing an impressive range and falsetto.However, the band as a whole was at its best when all four members harmonized together. It’s obvious that they are all very close, especially when they danced together on stage.

They were having fun, not just because they were performing in front of a large crowd, but because they were on stage together.

By the end of their set, the songs all started to sound the same and the audience got a bit restless waiting for Grace Potter & the Nocturnals to come on stage. And when they finally did, it was electrifying.

Potter started off with her cover of “Seven Nation Army,” which conveniently was pretty much the theme song of this Super Bowl. The audience sang the “oh oh oh oh oh oh” along with her, relishing in their football win.

Potter was exuberant, jumping up and down on the stage. This energy carried into her next song, “Hot Summer Night,” from her newest album The Lion The Beast The Beat.

Her next song, “Mastermind,” showed off the different facets of her voice, starting off quiet and crescendoing into the chorus. The lyrics of this song perfectly represented her music, which is “one part sugar / two parts feeling.”

While Grace Potter & the Nocturnals have many good songs, the quality of their music is amplified when they are on stage. Potter can do so much with her voice, but it sounds even better when she’s dancing all over the stage and connecting with the audience.

Her songs are driven with her passion for being where she is in that exact moment.

A few songs into her set, she brought up how much she loved the fact that fireworks were going off in Baltimore at 5:30 in the morning. “I love Baltimore, you guys are my kind of people,” she shouted. She continued on with her football theme before singing her heartbreaking song, “Apologies,” dedicating it to the 49ers because every winner should have at least a little bit of remorse.

She went on to sing a few hits from her new album such as “Timekeeper” and “Keepsake,” and then when it became time for quieter songs such as “Low Road,” she had the audience sing along with her to make sure that they were still enjoying themselves.

After she sang “Here’s to the Meantime,” she implored the crowd to be louder, asking them, “Am I wrong, or did you win the f**king Super Bowl?”

The second half of her set was less entertaining at some points. When she got quieter, many in the audience started talking, which took away from the atmosphere she was trying to create. “Stars,” a song about death, was beautiful, but the lights, which were meant to look like stars, may not have been necessary. The song is strong enough to stand on its own without creative staging.

The second half was also an opportunity for her to showcase the members of the band.

The guitarists had great bonding moments throughout the show, but the best parts were when they took over the stage for parts of songs and when Potter introduced each one of them.

The pace of the concert picked up when she went into both parts of “Nothing But the Water,” with some musical interludes and even a little bit of Destiny Child’s “Bootylicious” (which was extremely time-appropriate.) She even led the crowd in more of “Seven Army Nation.”

Just as the crowd was amped up and ready for her to keep singing forever, she announced that she was about to sing her last song, “Medicine.” This was a perfect choice, as the lyrics of this song represented what she had just done to the audience.

Every band member ended the song playing the drums, until the final sentence, where Potter finished with “I’ve got the medicine that everybody wants.”

It would have been the perfect ending, except that Potter hadn’t sung her hit, “Paris (Ooh La La)” yet. She was obviously going to come back for an encore, but the crowd alternated between shouting “Paris” and singing the same football battle cry over and over again.

She jumped back on stage and sang the title track of her new album, a Neil Young cover and finally “Paris,” which made the crowd extremely happy.

When she eventually had to leave the stage, the audience tried to bring her back with more of “Seven Nation Army.” Unfortunately, she didn’t do a second encore. But the audience was left feeling that the magic of her performance was not over.

Everyone is going to continue singing her songs, and she is probably going to go back to her hotel room and continue to jump up and down.