Issue date: 10/8/09 Section: Currents

Media Credit: Thomas Fountain Farms flowed from ambient song to song for a nearly-packed Cabin Friday night.

Not every great band in Eau Claire needs a banjo (though facial hair is still in the equation). Farms played an impressive and surprisingly fitting show at the Cabin Friday night, melding ambient soundscapes with hypnotically chaotic melodies. When playing live, Farms is able to generate the moving, emotional dynamics that are impossible to capture in a studio.

Farms opened the show without the audience noticing, moving fluidly from tuning the guitar to the piano, into an elegant, repetitious chord progression. Andy Todryk, who played drums for the remainder of the show, alternated between spacious guitar drones placed perfectly above Ben Larson's keyboard.

Almost the entire set flowed from song to song with no definitive breaks. Todryk's drumming employed aggressive, but calculated, dynamic shifts that kept the set from dragging. Larson created a wall of sound that never seemed noisy or discordant but always verged on that chaos.

Farms' volume seemed to outdo The Cabin and its regular patrons, but other than that, they set a similar mood to the usual acoustic balladry seen on Friday nights. The long, drawn-out repetition in each of their songs produced a calming effect, which in a way was enhanced by the intense volume that drowned out any other thoughts or distractions.

Todryk and Larson shared an on-stage presence that showed the connection they have in their music. With only two musicians, precision is a must to ensure a full sound, and Farms excelled in that. Their rhythms were flawlessly in time, except for one slip-up in their final song (which, to be fair, was a new endeavor).

In the past, Farms has been synonymous with "loud," but after this show, I think "moving" would be a much better fit.

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