Twiddle Show Lacking in Some Areas

Vermont-bred Twiddle is capable but becomes lost in translation.

Story by Andrew Beam

Twiddle is a band that easily falls into the category of a jam band. They are a band that could be a carbon copy of many jam bands that exist now. Their jams ramble on, completely going off track so much, that the theme of the song is lost in the jam. This made their show feel like a roller coaster ride, where it had its good points and some bad points. They are a band that is confused as to what music they truly want to make.

If you had attended the Twiddle show on September 12, you would have seen some of the worst dancing ever produced by a crowd. Dancing at this caliber is ever-present at most jam band shows. It can be performed by swaying the bodies in odd ways, dragging the feet in circles around the body or just not even dancing to the beat of the music. Twiddle didn't seem to mind at all.

While I was sitting at a table waiting for the band to start, a woman puts her drinks on my table and says to her friend, "If you like music, you'll like this band." The crowd started out around 50 people and soon grew to nearly 300. They seemed to enjoy the set as they danced and jumped around all night long.

As the evening went on,a certain pattern became prevalent in their live show. The song started out and moved into the verses, transitioned into the chorus, back into another verse, chorus, and then a long extended jam where each of the members of the band has their own showcase where they begin soloing. Gubb is a very impressive bassist with a style of slap/funk bass along with Savouldis' hypnotic screeching guitar solos which were audible in songs such as "Orderly Chaos" and "The Catapillar". The transitions into some of the jams were very awkward and choppy, leaving no time for any sort of adjustment to the time changes.

Looking past all of the technical difficulties and mishaps that affected the beginning, the band is incredibly tight and performs as one solid unit, playing nearly two and half hours of music. With songs like "Tiberius," which lasted for nearly 20 minutes, the band's creative output had a soulful funk tune to it, which along with Savoulidis' voice sounds similar to a Jamiroquai. The song's tempo changes to match what occurs in the lyrics. For example, there is an incident where the character falls drunk on the floor, so the band simulates this by slowing down the tempo until it comes to a halt, then jumps right back into the funkified verse. In the middle of the chaotic sound, keyboard player Ryan Dempsey whipped out a melodica, which is always lovely to see. The song seemed to drag on to the point of where they completely exhausted it. Neither the band nor the crowd seemed to mind. "Tiberius" seemed to be the most poppy song of the night and most structured as the band continually went back to chorus where Savoulidis loudly sang, "Tiberius!"

This evening, though, Guitarist Mihali Savoulidis seemed to be having a bit of trouble during the beginning when he spent a large amount of time fixing the tuning of his guitar, and then soon breaking one of them where he had to do an emergency string change while onstage. Luckily, as he was changing the string, the rest of the band carried on a funky improvisational jam so there would be no dead air on stage. In the beginning of the show during opening band Greyspoke's performance, the fire alarm was set off by the smoke produced on the stage which led to a 20 minute delay. The crowd didn't seem to mind as the all complied with the requests of the venue.

Their music is very diverse with songs crossing over into the reggae genre or just regular rock music. Some songs contained funk, reggae, and jazz all at once. Most of the genre changes would take place during the bridge part of the songs where the band would wander off into translucent and sometimes robotic jams. Twiddle is not a bad band by any means, but they are a band that has major potential to be better.

What do you think of Twiddle's sound?