Alec Gross @ The Living Room

Alec Gross
@ The Living Room
New York, NY - September 11, 2009

After all these years, the Sonic Parthenon blog finally made a stop at the highly reputable Living Room, a resource of rising singer-songwriter talent for nigh on a decade. And true to its word, the Living Room offered up one Alec Gross, a probing, contemplative artist backed by a sometimes country, sometimes pop band of solid talent, making use of such things as the pedal steel and a beautiful Hofner bass. I first caught Alec at a roundabout one recent Monday night at the Red Lion (the first time this blog finally got there too, after all these years) and with just his acoustic guitar Alec displayed some songcraft chops of the highest order. This time with the backing band, the songs were more fleshed out but some of the tracks, like "You Make Sense to Me" required nothing more than the man's voice and a simple string melody.

This was one of those sets of an artist where you take this whole, immense, city - especially on the date of this set - and you focus on the essentials, putting away the excess and the noise and the largess that make up the dominant motif of this city, and you focus on the little things that matter, little things that prove to be bigger than the big things, little things like the people you're with and the music that you hear. The ultimate moments of appreciation. And thankfulness. And peace.