Troy/Albany

Harp Meets The Dead: Mikaela Davis & Maybird, Lost in Wonderland, Lost in Time

by RS Benedict | Dec 11, 2023 11:35 am

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Posted to: Music

Mikaela Davis with special guest Maybird
Lark Hall
Albany, N.Y.
Dec. 7, 2023

In the depths of dreary winter, after a week of short and sunless days, as intermittent flurries dusted the sidewalks of Lark Street with snow, Mikaela Davis and Maybird played a set out of time and space.

Psych pop quartet Maybird opened with a set of tunes that stirred the same bittersweet wistfulness one gets from a reread of Mrs. Dalloway. Every Maybird song feels like you danced to it many years ago, even if you’re hearing it for the first time. The group’s sound combines late ​’60s psychedelia with energetic jam band beats and retro synth. They wear their anachronism on their sleeve: the band’s aesthetic is proudly 1970s, all denim jackets and flared jeans and long hair, guest steel guitarist Kurt Johnson playing barefoot with incense smoke snaking upward from his instruments.

“It feels like a middle school dance right now,” bassist Shane McCarthy said, teasing the audience’s apparent fear of the stage. The decidedly not middle school-aged crowd (I saw no one visibly under 30 at Lark Hall that night) had shrunk shyly toward the back of the theater, too sheepish to advance to the dance floor until McCarthy teased them into action.

Maybird played from their new album, Wonderland. ​“I can’t find my way home / No direction seems right / All I hear are echoes,” sang frontman Josh Netsky. Their live performance of the track ​“Lost in Wonderland” took a different dimension from the studio version with the addition of surf guitar on top of the song’s preexisting eerie reverb.

After a break, Mikaela Davis claimed her place center stage at the helm of her massive harp. It is impossible to describe a woman playing the harp without using words like angelic or ethereal, so we will get them out of the way here: Yes, Davis’s harp imbued the music with dreamlike resonance, but her music is rooted in earthy Americana, bluegrass, and 1970s folk rock, with heavy Grateful Dead influence. It doesn’t come across as retro or dated, though; instead, the effect is timeless. Her music could have come out last week, or it could have come out fifty years ago.

Backed by Maybird, Davis opened with the haunting ​“Cinderella” from her latest album, And Southern Star. The song combines delicate harp with surprising country western twang to paint a picture of aching loneliness and longing.

“We’ve been playing in Albany for ten years, going from small club to small club,” Davis said. ​“It feels really great to graduate to a large club.” The recently restored Lark Hall (formerly a yoga studio that fizzled out during the pandemic, and before that a dance studio with a friendly atmosphere but an unfriendly odor) is the heftiest and oldest theater in Albany’s Center Square, having been built in 1916 by Masonic women’s auxiliary organization, the Daughters of the Eastern Star. 

Davis and Maybird moved from song to song without explanation or banter, letting each piece flow into one another. Davis spoke little to the other musicians, too. They grew up together in Rochester, N.Y., and have collaborated for ten years — long enough to know how to communicate without words.

As the music’s formal structure gave way to jazzy improvisation and trippy virtuoso harp solos, the crowd, finally clustered on the dance floor at the front of the great hall, whirled and swayed. A swell of applause brought the band back for an encore. And then the spell ended, and we returned to 2023.

Where I’m going next: I’ll be chasing a bunch of underdressed Saint Nicks at Albany’s annual Santa Speedo Sprint on Dec. 9.

Tags: Mikaela Davis