Edwarde Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros play at Point Park
July 23, 2013
Despite Friday evening’s overcast sky and unseasonably cool breeze, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros managed to lift spirits at the Three Rivers Arts Festival with their intoxicating, yet adorably cheesy, sing-along lyrics.
The 10-person band’s free concert attracted a large and diverse crowd to Point State Park, and it was hard to traverse the field of listeners without bumping into a college hipster or parents with babies on their shoulders.
Regardless of whom listeners found themselves surrounded by, the band’s folky tunes had everyone swaying and bobbing heads in a sea of placid enjoyment.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros seemed to have a sound more fitting for a live performance than a recording studio, as the band’s stage presence made the versions of their songs on your iPod sound insipid by comparison.
Though the crowd begged for the hits, lead singers Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos reassured fans that the band would get to those songs eventually and encouraged them to sing along to the songs they played in the meantime.
Their persuasion worked, and almost every song featured backup vocals from hundreds of attendees.
The set’s finale was a heartfelt rendition of “Home,” the breakout single that catapulted the band to indie-folk notoriety.
Before the final bridge of “Home,” the song that features Ebert and
Castrinos recounting their memories as lovers finally expressing their feelings to one another, the band stopped its instruments and allowed fans to tell some stories of their own, which ranged from one fan fawning over Castrinos to another reciting a short poem.
Once the music resumed, the crowd joined in for a wholehearted and charming final hurrah, swaying and smiling en masse.