Believe it. Starting tomorrow, 26-year-old Danish front man Jannis Noya Makrigiannis will take his Choir of Young Believers from Copenhagen to Canada, where the Nordic chamber indie rockers begin their 10-day North American tour, going from Vancouver down the West Coast to LA, then returning Atlantic-side to play multiple shows in New York City (for the CMJ festival), and finally finishing in Chicago. This past spring, Makrigiannis performed in the U.S. as a duo with cellist Ceciele Trier, but has doubled up this time around to perform as a quartet on the following dates:
10.17.09 – Vancouver, BC – Media Club
10.18.09 – Seattle, WA – The Tractor Tavern
10.19.09 – Portland, OR – Holocene
10.20.09 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Shop
10.21.09 – Santa Monica, CA – KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” Session
10.21.09 – Los Angeles, CA – Spaceland
10.22.09 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge
10.22.09 – New York, NY – Piano's
10.23.09 – New York, NY – Cutting Room Studios (KEXP Session)
10.24.09 – New York, NY – Living Room
10.25.09 – Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern
10.26.09 – Chicago, IL – Schuba's
If you’re only acquainted with the anthemic “Action/Reaction,” a peppy track steeped in sunny chord progressions, you might want to familiarize yourself with the rest of This Is for the White in Your Eyes, the band’s blue-tinged 2009 debut, so you can mentally and emotionally prepare for the melancholy makings of Makrigiannis’ brain. The album unfolds like a cathedral: precisely designed, achingly beautiful, echoing in the cavernous recesses of the soul — with the reverb to prove it. But, like my metaphorical structure, it’s also dark and full of shadows, save for where windows let the light in. This choir is singing less hymnal hallelujahs and more you-done-me-wrongs. “Wintertime Love,” for example, features both the most mournful cello I can remember and the saddest collective string section of all time. Based on the steady solemnity of this song, this “wintertime love” who is “hiding the tears above” must have really wreaked some havoc on his heart. I wonder if Makrigiannis will cry on stage during this one. Guess there’s only one way to find out.
