Allison Hadley Photo
“We’ve been planning this social barrel of monkeys approach since we were kids,” joked Hans Bilger, headliner of Monday’s intimate show at Best Video.
His joke had weight. Every performer on stage had a connection with one another between the two bands — Amber Anchor (Dan Tressler and Jeff Smith) and Hans Bilger, Eli Greenhoe, and Griffin Brown on bass and guitar, guitar and baritone guitar, and drums, respectively. Bilger grew up with Greenhoe. Bilger played with Tressler. Bilger and Greenhoe both completed degrees in New Haven, but never overlapped.
The holiday-weekend smaller crowd on Monday night made Best Video feel almost like a living room. Greenhoe was on stage in socks, and acoustic instruments of every type were strewn across the stage area. The crowd was rapt, however, the whole time. One audience member gave a standing ovation for every song.
Amber Anchor played the sort of music that felt like late afternoon’s golden hour: warm, diffuse, and with the slightest tinge of sadness that the light would be gone. This was a duo that sold ever minor resolution in their songs that spoke of yearning and wandering, whose Louvin-like harmonies seemed to complement each other to an almost unreasonable degree. It was music, in short, that made you feel things. Tressler switched instruments multiple times, checking off every item on the list — violin, mandolin, guitar — and Smith responded in kind on guitar, banjo, and the rare unplugged dobro. Smith’s voice had a warmth and depth to it that felt like he was harmonizing with himself. It was music as lush as a golden memory, the way folk and Americana ought to be. It bears noting that this combination, continuity notes and all, of Amber Anchor and Hans Bilger worked programmatically better than many shows in recent memory.
Hans Bilger is the sort of artist who drops endlessly fascinating tidbits about himself with the introduction of every song. One song might be about learning German, and another might be about his difficulties with the Dutch Reform Church, or what it is to fly on an airplane. Bilger revealed his work studying animal communication in Germany while also citing growing up with bandmate Eli Greenhoe. It made for a compelling tapestry of connection and story that translated seamlessly into the music Bilger made. If Amber Anchor felt like an apple orchard, golden and warm, Bilger and company played music like what one encounters riding an interstate at night somewhere inside the American cosmos. The ‘cosmic American wayfarer’ trope from Gram Parsons came out to dwell somewhere in Greenhoe’s pedalboard for his baritone guitar — or, as he called it, “a southern ghost cowboy kind of vibe” to accompany Bilger’s piece on living in Austin, “Lone Star.” The clear affinity the players had for each other — despite, as Brown noted, not having played together before on stage — - drew the audience in just as much as the ethereal music with incredible emotional range. Harmony was at home in this group as well, with Greenhoe adding a depth to Bilger’s clear, crisp voice. It was reminiscent of Chris Thile but with a few cups less sugar and a very different approach to music. Bilger’s bass was contemplative, at times driving, and at times an echo of the guitar.
Toward the end of the show, Bilger took a moment to note all the connections between bandmates and bands: all of them had lived in New Haven at some point, and they’ve all been friends for years. He gestured to Greenhoe: “We met on the school bus in fifth grade. It’s been a haul. A delightful haul.” And the music showed it — that and the ever-present pull that New Haven can still have on its musicians, no matter how long they pass through.