Photos + Words | Matt & Kim with Waters

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WATERS | All photos by Kristen Abigail

It feels like summer in Nashville already, and the best way to start it off is with a sweaty rave kind of night involving Matt & Kim and WATERS.

The colorful night started off with San Francisco pop rock band WATERS, who recently released their debut record, What's Real, through Vagrant Records. The audience at Marathon Music Works was ready to get the party started as soon as WATERS hit the stage. With fun relatable lyrics, funky grooves and enthusiastic personalities, WATERS pumped up the crowd very well and left everyone wanting more.

And then Matt and Kim's set came on with a lot of smoke. Matt and Kim ran onto the stage immediately launching t-shirts and dancing along to a very loud bass. Kim screams  and Matt immediately starts laughing at Kim right as they begin their set. Their chemistry is obviously undeniable on stage. Throughout the entire set, Kim jumps up on top of her drum kit and dances tapping a bunch of the cymbals while Matt sings at the top of his lungs. Matt shows his goofy personality while Kim drops a bunch of f-bombs, girls vs boys jokes and she encouraging the girls in the room to crowd surf. The whole night was filled with sweat, screams, sing-a-longs, and a lot of jumping up and down. A few surprises are included in Matt & Kim's set that I don't want to spoil, because it is easily the best interactive show I have ever seen in Nashville. It's definitely an experience that you have to see for yourself.

Matt & Kim will continue to tour to support their new record, New Glow, throughout the summer. Please enjoy these photos by Kristen Abigail below.

MATT AND KIM

Concert Review | Passion Pit at Marathon Music Works in Nashville, TN

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Dear friend, as you know

Your flowers are withering

Your mother's gone insane

Your leaves have drifted away

But the clouds are clearing up

And I've come reveling

Burning incandescently

Like a bastard on the burning sea

I first heard “Sleepyhead” in the beginning of a budding romance, and maybe that’s why I fell in love with Passion Pit so easily, so quickly. How dreamy was the idea therein that a person’s eyes were stars punching holes through the dark, with love and desire burning behind them. The way that Michael Angelakos’s falsetto cut into those dance beats like bits of glass allured me. Jarring in its delivery, blissful in its reception, this was the perfect soundtrack for a blossoming relationship. 

Manners met us at the halfway point. We were cruising through the Santa Monica mountains on a hot summer day en route to Malibu. He let me plug in my iPod, so I put “Moth’s Wings” on full blast. He usually ignored most of my musical recommendations, choosing instead the same old Stones songs or spitting Public Enemy. Just as I suspected, he went crazy for this song... I knew he would; he wrote movies and had a complicated relationship with his father. While I sat there imagining our life together in cinematic flashes with this epic song playing, he watched the opening credits of his breakout film and saw his name within them.

I obviously kept this and all contemporary indie bands in the breakup. By June 2012, enough time had passed since our love died, but still, I avoided Gossamer for fear that it would conjure up feelings I had worked so hard to drown. I wasn’t wrong, but I really loved the album and was happy to judge it based on its merits alone, with no outside forces influencing me. Unfortunately, over the years I had trouble ignoring the mixed reviews I'd heard of their live performance, so I stayed away from their concerts, not wanting to burst my Passion Pit bubble. When I was given the chance to review them in Nashville last week, I figured I needed to see them at least once, especially since they had canceled their previously scheduled gig in July. And if they sucked, so what? I would still have my "Little Secrets" and "Constant Conversations" on file.

They didn’t suck at all. Every note was candy to the kids in this 18+ crowd. We danced til we sweat and sang at the top of our lungs, gobbling up one pop confection after another. I literally got wrapped up in one of the final moments during "Sleepyhead," after streamers fell from the ceiling of the converted warehouse that holds Marathon Music Works. No, the experience wasn’t without a healthy dose of nostalgia.* But it provided more joy than pain, and I walked away from it reveling.

*Nostalgia comes from Greek nostos ‘return home’ + algos ‘pain,' a term perfectly suited to Angelakos if you ask me.