Grace Potter & the Nocturnals revs up Tanglewood crowd

LENOX — One of the final acts in this season’s stellar lineup of popular artists hit the stage at Tanglewood Monday night.

Vermont-based rock group Grace Potter & the Nocturnals performed a high-energy, 16-song set that had the Shed crowd on their feet throughout the night.

Fronted by vocalist Grace Potter, the band also includes guitarists Scott Tournet, Benny Yurco, and Michael Libramento, along with drummer Matt Burr. The group formed in Waitsfield, VT in 2002 and have already released four studio albums, including their most recent one The Lion The Beast The Beat (2012).

The regular set featured two songs off that album – “Never Go Back” and “Timekeeper.” The band opened the set with “Medicine,” a track from their 2010 self-titled album, and rounded it out with their hit song “Pairs (Ooh La La)” also off the 2010 album. They then returned for an encore performance of some of their recent material including “Stars” and the title track “The Lion The Beast The Beat.”

Potter, dubbed the “best female rock singer in the country right now” by USA Today in 2012, carries a solid vocal sound and has the ability to alternate between more mellow, keyboard-based tunes and screaming, guitar-based rock jams. She even throws in a bluesy twist, as she did Monday night with a cover of the blues standard “Mystery Train.”

Benny Yurco had his moment about two-thirds of the way through the set, treating the crowd to a guitar solo that included a riff of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard.”

The show kicked off with singer-songwriter Josh Ritter as the opening act. He performed several songs from his new album The Beast in its Tracks before moving on to fan-favorite “Kathleen” from his 2003 album Hello Starling.

Early on his set, Ritter thanked the crowd and acknowledged this “amazing place.”

“We are thrilled to be here in this amazing, amazing place.”

Posted by Dana Drugmand on August 22, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry