Live Review: Daniel Rossen, Jasia

Lone Grizzly Bear Daniel Rossen delivered a beautiful show for the small crowd gathered upstairs at Newtown Social. Rossen is a shy man whose quiet self-depreciation would be swallowed up by a larger venue, but NSC was perfect, giving him a chance to awkwardly unravel his set at leisure for a warm group of fans. Tonally, the set was a departure from his band work while still relying on much of his collaborative material. The stripped-back folk setting sounded sublime.

Melbourne dream-pop artist Jasia opened, playing a rich set of songs drenched in wintery atmospherics. There was more than a hint of Andrew Bird creeping through as he looped sweetly lilting violin passages to play underneath wistful finger pickin’. Jasia’s secret weapon was his startling falsetto that dipped and suddenly took off every now and then. His music is perhaps too dense and ambient to go mainstream, but enjoying such delicious melancholy in a half-empty club room is a fine trade-off for radio airtime on tinny alarm clock speakers. Hopefully it continues this way.

Rossen shuffled on and settled into Up On High from his 2012 EP Silent Hour/Golden Mile. It’s a dark country tune, and it set the tone for the rest of the set. Rossen’s (and, by extension, Grizzly Bear’s) songs are angular and sometimes strange, and as the night flowed on each song found its odd way into all the little corners or our perception. The babbling crispness of the banjo on Easier sounded like it came from an old radio next to the lush depths of his twelve-string, and the serene beauty of In Ear Park sounded like heaven next his brooding cover of Townes Van Zandt’s apocalyptic ballad Kathleen. Rossen finished with an enchanting version of Judee Sill’s Waterfall.

Before the lights came up, more than one of us casually wiped a tear away.