Angus & Julia Stone at the Cedar, Minneapolis (18 Oct 2014)

Conner Youngblood

Opening up the show was Dallas’ Conner Youngblood, who spent his entire set in near-darkness. Youngblood’s style of singing is almost a struggling whisper, and his songs are deeply really personal/emotional to him.



In the middle of his set, Youngblood noted the absolute silence from the sold out crowd, “This is the most respectful crowd I’ve ever seen!”



You can tell Youngblood is still a new artist, constantly writing and refining his songs. One of his latest song, “The Cuckoo Bird”, for the first time featured a banjo, for the first time.



When he found out that he only had enough time for one more song, he decided to replay “Australia”, but in a different tune. The story, he tells us, was the first time he played the repeated song, it was because he messed up early in his set and then decided to play it again … but differently. I guess tradition stuck, and he kept playing the song twice on his set now.



This was Angus and Julia Stone‘s first time in Minneapolis, and they were so impressed by the reception that they mentioned that they’ll certainly be back in town very soon. The brother/sister brought with them a full backing band, complete with over 10 guitars, and a portable soundboard engineer!

Setlist

The way the setlist was put together, it seemed like it was intentional that lead vocals were traded off between Angus and Julia… so you won’t get like three songs with Angus on lead vocals, etc.



Sometime they had some fun stories about their songs, for example “For You” was about Julia’s ex-boyfriend. It was about the state of their relationship and she felt like she was going to break up with him. When he replied with a song of his own, she was excited to hear the reply song… only to realized it was some “weird death metal song”, as if he didn’t even listen to her song.



During “Private Lawns”, a song that was re-issued on their debut album A Book Like This, Julia brought out the trumpet and played a solo section.



While their set included songs from all their three albums, there was one odd cover from the Grease film, “You’re the One That I Want”, done in an almost unrecognizable fashion.



By the time their finale “Heart Beats Slow” started, a few audience members started standing up and dancing… then almost as quickly, everyone in the audience stood up. They all remained standing up throughout the two song encore as well.



Angus & Julia Stone are currently on a sold out national US tour, in support of their self-titled album.