Saturday, February 23, 2008

Taken By Trees @ Hiro Ballroom - Fri Feb 22, 2008

Lost and Found

Fortunately for Victoria Bergsman, aka Taken By Trees, the Hiro Ballroom was pretty empty last night. Last time I saw her on a stage was for the Peter Bjorn and John tour that stopped at Mercury Lounge where she sang the couple of lines she has on their very famous Young Folks. She barely made eye contact with the public and seemed like at any moment she was going to run away. It wasn't quite like that last night.


The show started with a video projection that made the ballroom even quieter and set a good mood for listening Victoria's beautiful voice. It was a video with lots of trees... lots, and if there was a reference different from her band telling us we were about to be taken by her trees, I guess I didn't really get it. She started with Julia.

Open Field is Taken By Trees' debut album. It is a very calmed piece of pop that I like to think it reflects perfectly how Victoria is... fragile, delicate, sad on the outside and very warm in the inside. Of course that was pretty much what she played and it sounded great at Hiro, particularly the two songs that pretty much make the album for me, Lost & Found and Open Field. Ironically those two songs were not written by Victoria, but by Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell and PB&J's Bjorn Yttling, respectively, so actually they don't really sound like they were not hers.

She was happy in her own way, shy and introspected, with the crowd and seemed like she gave us a last minute gift for how quiet we were for her. She whispered her guitarist and soon after he started playing their new song that has been hitting every blog around these days, her cover of Guns N' Roses's Sweet Child of Mine. It was definitely the best moment of the show.


She played one more song and said it was the last one, but as everybody knows, she was lying. A one song encore only by herself with her guitar was really the last song of the show, but she didn't finish it... "I am too shy, I am sorry" and she left us hanging there. I guess she really needs her band. [photos of the show]

♫♫♫♪

Were you at the show? How did you like it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Video of Taken By Trees_ Sweet Child of Mine (2.22.08 Hiro Ballroom, NY )

http://startmeup.tumblr.com/post/27294531

Unknown said...

Nice, thanks.