Kishi Bashi Revisits His Discography With Genre-Bending Brilliance At Whirling Tiger

Sporting a very sharp suit accented with an adorable otter, Kishi Bashi (stage name of Kaorou Ishibashi) took the stage, just him and his trusty violin named Tsunami. He introduced what would be a reflection of his career in chronological order. An easel sitting stage right showcased the album art to his very first EP, Room for Dream, a pun whose explanation got a groan from the audience. He opened the set with Manchester, a perplexing, beautiful meta-narrative of a love story as told by its narrator writing a novel about this love story. Drake Boling

When an artist comes out the gate that powerfully with the very first song they release, they are either setting the bar too high or setting a precedent for a legendary career. This evening turned out to be a testament to how innovative Kishi Bashi has remained through the years, constantly switching up his songwriting style while expanding his sonic palette. Drake Boling

After the frantic, violin-shredding call-and-response of It All Began With A Burst, Mr. Ishibashi flipped the album artwork on the easel to reveal his debut LP, 151a. After a moment of explaining this album title, the thesis of the evening became clear. 151a is a loose translation of a Japanese idiom referring to ‘one place, one time,’ a concept that draws attention to the particularity of any one moment that cannot be recreated. As he explained, tonight would be an organic reinterpretation of his catalogue, something conjured in front of our very eyes by means of looping live takes of the instruments rather than relying on backing tracks. Drake Boling

By this time, his violin work was bolstered by two other musicians, banjo-playing Mike Savino (perhaps better known as the artist Tall Tall Trees) and cellist Emily Hope Price. Violin, banjo, and cello, and a bunch of guitar pedals to affect and stretch these instruments to their full, far-flung potential. The trio masterfully covered the sonicscape, using pedals to pitch up and down octaves and layering loops on top of each other, adding percussive flourishes in between melodies until the full frequency spectrum was filled and sounded lush. Drake Boling

After Wonder Woman, Wonder Me, and Atticus in the Desert, he introduced the “aggressively titled” breakup song, I Am The Antichrist To You. Streaming numbers show this to be one of his most popular songs, and the audience seemed to agree, with everyone singing along, asking, “Who are you? Who am I to you?” only to be answered by the title. Around this time, my girlfriend/bandmate made the earth-shattering observation that the man often sings like a violin. My jaw was on the floor. Just listen to that chorus, and imagine a master of the instrument modeling falsetto melodies off of the fretless glide of the sawing strings. My mind started to race. I’ve always noticed that, generally speaking, singing drummers often tend to sing more percussively than their guitar-playing counterparts. Indeed, singing pianists often opt to belt in a similar mellifluous action as if hitting hammer-struck notes led by their hands and sustained by their feet. I’m afraid she might have just cracked some sort of ontological musical code and seen through the matrix. Drake Boling

The next art change revealed an album named after one of the shortest poems ever composed—the single word: Light. The neoclassical opulence of Philosophize in It! Chemicalize With It! saw Tall Tall Trees whacking a metal piece attached to the skin of his banjo, effectively creating a snare drum beat that he looped from his pedalboard. The dance party of The Ballad of Mr. Steak naturally saw an anthropomorphized giant steak mascot come out and dance around in a moment of playful abandon. Drake Boling

The next album reveal was, of course, the psychedelic, abstract flowerscape of Sonderlust. Although I may consider this close to my favorite Kishi Bashi album, most of the reasons I love it are for some of the truly other-worldly synth sounds on the album! Drake Boling

Supporting band members exited the stage, and he plucked the melody to M’Lover unaccompanied and slowed down the synth ballad Can’t Let Go Juno in an emotional, layered catharsis. Drake Boling

The next album art reveal of assorted birds against a white backdrop announced that Omoiyari was up next. This is basically a concept album that explores Japanese internment camps during WWII and has some really breathtaking storytelling. In fact, back in 2015, Kishi Bashi wrote a post to fans asking for crowdfunding to bring this concept album to life, and at that time, if I recall correctly, this was the first Indiegogo or GoFundMe campaign I ever contributed to. He told us that the documentary project that grew out of Omoiyari is now able to stream on Paramount+, which I am excited to watch soon. Violin Tsunami was done with only Kaoru onstage, just playing into one mic, building up a stormy swell of layers of looped violins. Drake Boling

The three then gathered around one mic center stage like a family fun time folk band from the 70s for Marigolds and kept this format as they dug into the Emigrant EP, a folkier collection of songs that featured Cascades and Wait for Springtime. In interviews, when asked about the difference between playing violin and playing fiddle, Kishi Bashi has described the fiddle playing as “drunker violin playing.” Here, he’s fully into fiddle territory. Drake Boling

Mrs. Price then collected song questions on her phone and basically interviewed Kishi Bashi in the middle of the set, which I thought was cool—something I hadn’t seen before—and offered insight into his creative process and some of his gear. This unique moment concluded with a sort of rig rundown, where he demonstrated many pedals on his board. Drake Boling

Following the Q&A portion of the night was last year’s Kantos, his most recent gold-encrusted, seemingly ABBA-inspired album, which was a return to form for maximalist classical compositions juxtaposed with some very funky bass lines and over-the-top 80s sensibilities. He introduced it as being inspired by the novel Hyperion—a proclamation that made me involuntarily release a “hell yeah.” I read the first novel in the Hyperion Cantos last year, and it instantly entered the sphere of my absolute most favorite novels of all time. Someone from the back exclaimed, “Shout out The Shrike!” (It was probably my buddy Will.) Drake Boling

The main set climatically closed with a cover of This Must Be The Place (yes, that one). As far as unconventional covers go, something about the staccato fiddling and a very syncopated placement of lyrics makes this song, Everybody Knows, feel fresh and intriguing every time. Drake Boling

A lot of bands come back onstage for an encore. This is to be expected and feels like a charade to play along with much of the time. To turn this strange custom on its head, after much applause, the band unplugged their instruments and headed into the crowd for a totally unplugged, acoustic encore. Kaoru stood slightly elevated, this time armed with an acoustic guitar, rotating around to make sure the whole surrounding audience had a good view. Drake Boling

Sometimes the simplest change in the way an artist uses space can make the biggest dynamic. Illuminated by cell phone flashlights, unmediated by any stage, barriers, or sound system, this encore was pure, it was raw, and it really took the entire performance to the next level. Drake Boling

After the beautifully fingerpicked Penny Rabbit & Summer Bear kicked off the encore, a true wildcard was up next. Unicorns Die When You Leave was actually the first song I had ever heard by Kishi Bashi (we’re talking… like 7th grade here, people). I found its unconventional instrumentation and real WTF-lyrical content were something I had never encountered before. I was not expecting this track, and I was so delighted to hear it on the setlist. Even though I hadn’t heard this song in years, some lines stay with you, such as the absurd opening, “a cherry fruit roll-up / in the evergreens,” or one of the most insane White Castle product placements I’ve ever heard in a song. Drake Boling

An audience member I had previously clocked as a certified pimp wearing a sweet hat then bestowed his colonial tricorn cap upon our performer, and let me tell you, it suited him well. Kishi Bashi and co. closed with perhaps one of his poppiest tracks. Honeybody ended this impromptu campfire session with a contagiously joyful sing-along. Drake Boling

Although the man has simply too many excellent songs to be fully fulfilled in an hour-and-a-half setlist, I thought this selection of songs did a great job of encapsulating such an excellent musical career. If you are looking for other great songs from Kishi Bashi, check out the breezy Late Night Comic from Kantos, the simple love story of Q&A , or anything super trippy and synthy off Sonderlust (especially the deliriously epic Ode To My Next Life, a song that exploded my consciousness into a million fragments the first time I heard it). Drake Boling

Before closing, I want to give a quick shoutout to the Oshima Brothers, who opened the show. At first I assessed their kind of homespun folk as a sort of Hovvdy-adjacent alt-country that I generally regard as Not My Vibe, but I ended up finding them endearing! Their set had a small projector shooting their logo and some kind of archival-type visuals on a circular backdrop, which I thought was a very neat way to dress the stage in an unconstructive way for an opener. The duo’s stage presence was very brotherly and wholesome, and I was charmed by how happy and grateful they were just to be performing. Their enthusiasm extended all the way through Kishi Bashi’s set, and even during the encore I could see them packed right by the performers, just soaking in the opportunity. Drake Boling

Overall, although I’ve never been to a show that hot at Whirling Tiger, it was the perfect concert at the perfect place, with the perfect blend of showmanship and intimacy that made this concert one of my favorite shows I’ve seen this year, and that’s saying something. Drake Boling