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WESTWORD
Dave Herrera
Overcasters, the promising new outfit led by Kurt Ottaway, just returned from a pair of shows on the East Coast with the Fluid. While the shows were awesome, from the sounds of it, the band was fortunate to have made it there in one piece. As the band was passing through Joliet, Illinois, in route to New Jersey for the first show in Hoboken, the band's van hit a patch of ice and ended up in a ravine. Miraculously every emerged from the accident unscated. According to Ottaway, the experience was pretty harrowing. The wreck forced the outfit to drive with cardboard and duct tape placed over several of the windows, which were blown out on impact. And the outside temperature at the time was seventeen degrees below zero, which caused spider cracks to form on Erin Tidwell's drums. Thankfully, the band made it to the show, but ended up having to play the set on borrowed equipment. The weather should be far more bearable next month when the group heads to Austin for the city's annual South By Southwest music festival, to which they were just invited. Congrats and Godspeed.
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It was a painfully cold night in northern New Jersey, but the legendary Maxwell's was plenty warm, and any thoughts of harsh weather were eclipsed once the show got started. Opening, oddly enough, was Overcasters from Denver. The band had been invited to share the stage with the Fluid on two East Coast dates, including this gig and the date the following night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and probably should have been given the middle slot over a relatively unknown local band. Overcasters opened with "Expect the Worst," and the iridescent character of that instrumental set the stage for what was to come. For this show, videographer Shane Williams created an especially effective string of spirals, splashes of color and movement and abstract imagery to augment the mood of the music, utilizing cloudy blues, muted reds, vibrant pastels and shadings suggesting depth and flow. Maxwell's is a room smaller than even the hi-dive, but the sonic character of that square chamber, expertly dialed in by a sound guy specifically brought in by the Fluid, made Overcasters sound better than it ever has. "Hey Hope" sounded uplifting and bracing all at once, and "Electrocution" lived up to its name, ending the set in a sustained burst of wails and thick rhythms. New bassist Ed Marshall added a more dynamically textured flavor to the act's sound than it previously enjoyed, and he seamlessly rocked along with the rest of the band.
Denver Post
Ricardo Baca
The Overcasters: This is one of those bands that needs to be seen to be understood and felt. They started playing out last year, and I was constantly running into people who were surprised by what they sounded like. Now I can see why. The Overcasters play the kind of music that could score your dreams in those deep hours of rapid eye movement sleep. Peek through the gauzy guitars and all those instrumental effects and youll hear a familiar voice singer-guitarist Kurt Ottaway although youve never quite heard this side of him before.
Ottaway is best known as the man behind Twice Wilted and Tarmints, the latter of which broke up recently. His new project with Erin Tidwell, Jeremy Ziehe and John Nichols is decidedly a more psychedelic and emotive, layered, pop-oriented rock outfit thats as pretty as it is spooky. It helps, too, that the band played against a video wall of projected psychedelia at their Bar Standard set on Saturday something that may seem like an indulgence, but its actually more of necessity, given the symbiotic relationship of the music and the visuals.
Jon Solomon
It took a while for Overcasters frontman Kurt Ottaway to get his guitar rig dialed in. His wasn't getting any sound out of his blue Gretsch, so he took a wrench out of his toolbox and tried tightening the input jack. The room was nearly completely full by time Ottaway gave up trying to fix the Gretsch and went with a different guitar instead and started the set about ten minutes late. But it was the worth the wait. Drummer Erin Tidwell pounded out the tom-heavy beats on a stunning new white drum set while Ottaway and guitarist John Nichols laid down thick and fuzzy reverb-drenched riffs. The Fluid's John Robinson and Garrett Shavlik stopped by to check out the psych-rock set.
Verdict: It might have been a short set, but Overcasters packed a hell of a punch to just a few songs.
