Last Friday, St. Paul & the Broken Bones slid into east Raleigh, blew the lid off The Ritz and made concert attendants shake in their boots. The eight-person soul group gave a two-hour performance brimming with raw talent, leaving the audience rocked from head to heel.
St. Paul & the Broken Bones is an act that is part soul, part funk, part rock with a dash of gospel. The band features the standard drums, bass and guitar found in any modern-day outfit, but includes the less common electric piano, trumpet, saxophone and trombone that set it apart and give the more upbeat songs a big band feeling. All of this is helmed by Paul Janeway, the band’s vocalist. Janeway’s Alabama cry has the unbelievable projection needed to ring out amongst the loud instrumentals, and the singer’s stamina is something hard to believe.
Suffice to say, the voice backs up the bright red suit Janeway performed in, and fits his hip-swaying swagger perfectly. The sound created by the band is a cross between Jonny Lang and Louis Prima, attracting fans of jazz, funk, gospel and country, making for a very diverse crowd. The show was perfect for the dark and moody atmosphere of The Ritz, and the performance kept an excited crowd spellbound for most of the night.
If there is anything to criticize about Friday’s performance, it would be how the night started. After a fun opening act from Aaron Lee Tasjan, St. Paul & the Broken Bones launched into the song “Crumbling Light Posts Pt. 1,” a song that does little to hype up a crowd and fails show off the band’s talent as an ensemble.
There are two flavors of St. Paul & the Broken Bones. There’s the slow, gospel-sounding blues tracks led mostly by Janeway, and the big band, high-energy songs where every instrument harmonizes in a cacophony of noise and energy. Both flavors are great and sought out by fans of the outfit, but one makes for a better opener than the other. With little audience interaction, the first half of the show felt somewhat directionless, with the band playing songs from their two albums (“Half the City” and “Sea of Noise”) seemingly at random.
That’s not to say that the first half didn’t have its moments. The band’s performance of “I’ll Be Your Woman” left lovers in the audience swaying, and at one point Janeway turned the show over to the band for a whole song to let them rock out and presumably give his vocals a rest without breaking up the show. Another plus was that the band and Janeway constantly put little spins on each song, making the event feel unique as a live performance should. Never did a song sound the same on stage as it would on the radio. By the end of the first hour, every member of the band was given at least one chance to launch into a solo, which always felt earned and spontaneous.
However, the show took a turn from good to great during a performance of “Broken Bones & Pocket Change,” during which Janeway climbed up lighting cables onto a 10-foot-tall speaker wall. After dancing on the wall of speakers and performing directly to audience members in the balcony seating — now only two feet away — Janeway leapt back onto stage, landed hard and kept singing from the stage floor.
“The stage presence there was something that you don’t often see,” said Noah Sacks, a concert attendee and an NC State sophomore studying environmental sciences. “He’s such a performer and he’s so into it.”
After two minutes of full applause, the night continued with hit after hit from that point forward, including crowd pleasers “Call Me” and “Half the City,” the song about home “Is It Me,” and a very exciting cover.
“My favorite part of the show was when they did the ‘Moonage Daydream’ cover by David Bowie,” said Griffin Matthews, an NC State sophomore studying business administration. “It was my second time seeing St. Paul & the Broken Bones and they were just as good as the first time. If they come back, definitely do not miss them.”
The Bowie cover brought back the concert’s opener and featured a fun electric guitar duel between the two bands before St. Paul & the Broken Bones closed the night with the tender ballad, “Burning Rome,” perfectly capping off an excellent show from a band with a sound like no other.
Paul Janeway, lead singer of St. Paul & the Broken Bones, stands on top of speakers during the band's performance of "Broken Bones & Pocket Change" on Friday night at The Ritz. St. Paul & the Broken Bones stopped in Raleigh as part of the Sea of Noise tour.
