Suds on Bleeker

Seattle is paying a lot of attention to Tomo Nakayama. As lead singer for the orchestral pop eight-piece super-group Grand Hallway, Nakayama has been connecting with fans and Seattle’s musical illuminati for a few years now…and it’s starting to show.
On March 6th, 2010, Grand Hallway played back-to-back sold-out shows at posh Seattle nightclub, The Triple Door. With the Seattle Rock Orchestra backing up the band, a children’s choir for the first, all-ages show, and a separate opener for each standing room-only performance, Grand Hallway et al represented a sizable percentage of the local music talent that night. Containing members of other local favorites such as the Maldives, Voyager One, and rising solo artist Shenandoah Davis, the band is a disparate and musically-divergent group that, when it comes together on stage, focuses all of its recombinant energy on making the audience swoon.
While most groups tend to have an internal consistency that makes them appear to be “a band” to the common onlooker, Hallway as a picture has never seemed to crystallize. Having been featured on the cover of ubiquitous Seattle arts-mag City Arts last month, they resemble nothing more than their individual aspects. But on the stage, with the swellingly professional Seattle Rock Orchestra (as lead by Scott Teske), and backed by a field of LED’s like fairy-dust, appearances fail to matter, and the audience floats on a smooth-sailing cloud of pop for the span of the evening.
As opener for the late show, Thousands failed to impress. A two-man, soft-voice indie folk outfit, a la Iron & Wine, the pair padded its way lightly through a breeze of a set so light it made little impact. Imminently pleasant and non-intrusive as it was, my eyes kept getting drawn to the large, empty stage, and piles of instruments laying in wait for 70+ musicians to strike up the band. As intros go, a lackluster one, but fitting in terms of prettiness. Once their set was done, however, the orchestra filtered in as the audience was treated to a short presentation by Nakayama of Hallway’s new official video for ”Blessed Be, Honey Bee”, an album highlight from last year’s much-ballyhooed Promenade. A dramatic little film featuring a kind of Where the Wild Things Are-surreality, wherein a cast of children are thrown about in tousled, slow-motion seas of blankets and couch pillows, it felt very much like a Soul Asylum video from the mid-90’s. Capturing both the serious and playful sides of the band’s sound, it served as excellent lead-in to the main show.
Nakayama himself does not necessarily cut a striking figure. A relatively unassuming Japanese man of roughly 5’6”, he seems to swim in his suit and tie combo, but the voice his body houses will often explode in a piercing falsetto that tingles. Rounding out the band proper are two dedicated violins, a steel guitar, two keyboards, an accordion courtesy of Ms. Davis, and the occasional banjo. The band performed a healthy swath of songs from each of their 3 releases, as well as a rousing rendition of “Blessed Be” that raised a hair on every in-house neck, but the real surprise of the evening was a mid-show, two-song stint by Shenandoah Davis herself. Nakayama left the stage in order that Davis could take to the center, and she proceeded to warble her inimitable way through two brand new songs. Head was in hands, as the beauty of the backing musicians fused with the longing and sweetness in her voice to cement the aforementioned warm and fuzzy glow for the rest of the evening.
Grand Hallway will be playing very consistently over the next couple of months, including a stint at this year’s South by Southwest music festival in Austin, TX, this week. If you get a chance to see them, take a cute boy and/or girl with you, and discover them together.