Concert Review: Year of the Buffalo

You may not have heard of Year of the Buffalo, in fact I'm willing to bet you haven't.  They're a small indie folk band out of Columbus, OH, and the concert we went to was in a small venue in downtown C-Bus.  A week or so before my fellow editor and I decided it had been too long since we'd gone out to see some music.  We searched the interweb until we found a list of upcoming local concerts.  We picked Year of the Buffalo after browsing their band camp page and realizing that they were actually really good.
 They have a slowed down folk sound that is almost always melancholy but always very pretty and powerful.  This is thanks mostly to the great vocals from two of the three members of the band.  One guy had a guitar and his voice, one woman just sang and their third member supported with plucky harmonies from either a guitar or mandolin.  The male-female vocal harmony is always a favorite of mine and they did not disappoint.  They were on key all night, even when absolutely belting out their songs.  their vocals were more in tune, more passionate and more interwoven than most of the performers you would see live on Saturday Night Live or what have you.  They seemed to really enjoy playing music together and it showed.  Their live performance gave new life, passion and movement into their songs and to be honest I enjoyed their live renditions more than the album.  The concert began with three or so increasingly happy songs, my favorite of which (which I have yet to find a recording of) being a wild western melody with forlornly whistled melodies.  This was then follow by an excellent cover of Rhianna's "Stay".  Other highlights included a song written about the lead singers grandparent's love story, which they had never performed on stage, and which brought a tear to the singers eye.  To use an overused sporting term, they really left it all out on the stage.  All of this was in front of a crowd of maybe 40 people.  But you may never come to Columbus, and may never get to see Year of the Buffalo live. This is too bad.  But if you take nothing else from this article, do not underestimate local talent.  Go to a random show, see a random band, go see some music, you might be pleasantly surprised.  There's a lot of great music out there, so grab a buddy, grab some beers and go see whats out there.
Check out YOTB's band camp here!