Maria Somerville and Joanne Robertson played Pioneer Works

Maria Somerville and Joanne Robertson teamed-up for a great dual set at Brooklyn's Pioneer Works.

Joanne Robertson played the first of the two headlining sets of the night and her minimal guitar work echoed through Pioneer Works' massive atrium, bouncing off the brick and glass to add even more booming texture to the songs at hand. Playing with another guitarist on stage, the billowing chords shaped the night, while Robertson's muted vocals spread faintly in the distance. Her hushed voices was deeply covered by the music itself and the skeletal sound took on a massive scale in the live setting and really helped set the tunes on a new sonic force, powerful and still restrained. Without much notice, Maria Somerville took to the stage in a cloud of fog and slowly began to spin her songs into sprawling works of art that devoured the room in one whole gasp. Appearing only as shadows, the guitarist and bassist with their hoods drapped over their heads to add even more anonymity to their appearance. Her swelling anthem "Garden" soared with devotion, a blissed-out track with heavenly appeal, it was one of extreme power that billowed with a divine sensation. Following it with "Projections" made for a one-two punch and the triumphant affair of the night. The slowcore rhythms of the tune grounded the show and drew in the attention of the crowd under a stellar state of bewilderment. The haze of the night never slowed and as the songs continued their assaulting wall of sound, the fog intensified behind the band and really added to the mood of the night. Swirling like the haze on stage, the riffs ballooned with effects, the ragged notions dulling and moving towards an even more dream-like state, clouds of sound enveloping everything in its path. The night was a slow burn of an event, but between these two powerhouses, their music cascaded towards the stars, reaching for the cosmos with a passionate and celestial energy that radiated with pure admiration and adornment. Relishing in the moment, the crowd was enraptured from the start and left in a daze until the final chords evaporated into the ether, relinquishing us back into our normal headspace, let down from the euphoric state that filled the room with such sonic perfection.