Vansire Brings the Driftless Midwest to the West Coast: Concert Review
Photo by Rachel Marie Lane
After releasing several singles over the first half of this year, indie dream pop duo Vansire ventured to the West Coast to headline a few shows and play at the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco. I caught them at the Quartyard, a small outdoor venue in downtown San Diego. The band, made up of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Josh Augustin and guitarist Sam Winemiller, with Sam’s brother Isaac on bass and drummer Matt accompanying for the tour, was very excited to make it out to sunny Southern California, a nice change of pace from the “driftless north” of their home state, Minnesota. While the slowness and mundanity of the Midwest are the inspiration behind many of their songs, each song found eager listeners in the urban crowd, as we all nodded, danced, and sang along.
Joy Guerrilla opened the show with funky instrumentals as the crowd grabbed merch and food, and Vansire watched from the sidelines. I saw Josh several times moving through the crowd, a nice perk of going to smaller concerts. The crowd all settled into place when Vansire’s set began, opening with the jazzy “Halcyon Age.” The band played a good mix of their newest singles and their older songs, many of which were from their most recent album, The Modern Western World. Josh noted that they hadn’t played the eponymous track from that album until this tour, with national and global unrest making it feel more relevant than ever. It meshes somber lyrics about the collapse of civilization with a calm lyrical delivery and melodic acoustic sound, creating a peaceful, almost optimistic song.
This balance of disparate elements–gloom and hope, poppy electronica and classic sensibility–is central to Vansire’s music. Their song “Metamodernity” paints the vision well, metamodernism being defined as a sort of balancing of modernism’s cynicism and postmodernism’s self-awareness with a new kind of tentative hope. Each of their songs is tinged with nostalgic grief but buoyed by refocusing on what matters most: the love of and from one’s community. And a concert, where a horde of strangers gather together to sing the same songs they all love, is one of the best places to feel it. Several people from the apartment complex across the street that looked over the venue stepped out onto their balconies to enjoy the night’s music, too.
Not only are Vansire’s lyrics poetic and thoughtful, but their musicianship is masterful as well. This was especially evident from their live performance, where they added many delightful synthesizer interludes and breakdowns to the songs. We were treated to some great electric riffs as well as a little sax from Isaac.
My favorite songs from the show were “The Latter Teens” and “Part of the Dream,” two that had already been my favorites from my listening. I love the tragic but relatable end of “The Latter Teens” and the sweetness of “Part of the Dream.” “A Long Drive Back” and “Evening Light” were surreal to experience with a harmonizing crowd. The encore finished the night with “Nosebleed Seats,” a peppier track supported by groovy guitar, and “From the Subway Train,” an appropriate nod to the August date with its opening lyric “When August comes, I don’t count the days…”
This year’s new releases and tours make me hopeful for a new Vansire album soon. Josh and Sam have been making music together since high school and have routinely displayed deep artistic thought and technical prowess across their albums, EPs, and singles. Whatever they’re cooking up next, I’m excited to hear it and be transported from sunny SoCal to the humble and humbling Midwest.
