The Like Whatevers Set New Standard for Underground

The Underground featured three great music acts last Friday night; Shelly Short, Darren Hanlon and The Like Whatevers.

Hailing from Portland, Shelly Short was up first and proved to be a great warm-up for Darren Hanlon.

Short displayed a potent yet delicate voice that complimented her acoustic performance.

It was hard to hear her between the songs, but I was very impressed by her strength as a performer alone.

I wish I had picked up one of her albums as she is definitely worth checking out.

Up next was Darren Hanlon, a well-regarded singer-songwriter from Australia.

Hanlon delivered a more than solid performance.

It seemed that Hanlon was the biggest draw of the night despite going on second.

Although Hanlon is known for being a charming and impressive tunesmith, it’s Hanlon’s lyrics that provided the most fun in his performance.

One of the highlights was seeing a duet between Hanlon and Short on his exquisite “All These Things.”

I implore you to check this guy out if you haven’t already.

In my four semesters of being at Mary Washington, I’ve never actually seen The Like Whatevers play. So I was very curious to finally see them perform.

The Like Whatevers are an interesting build of a band. They have around seven or eight members and play fairly neutral pop rock with minor splashes of genre variances.

I was expecting a mish-mash of indie-pop with perhaps some punk energy thrown in for good measure, but The Like Whatevers’ sound is instead both refreshing and non-indulgent.

Considering I hadn’t been introduced to them beforehand, I was a little under-whelmed by how mellow they are.

While the band was into it, playing very cohesively, the crowd didn’t seem to care as they had already been converted long before a note had been played.

It can be tough to balance a stage performance with so many band members, but the Like Whatevers held there own.

Their music could, however, use a little bit more rabble-rousing fun. While I applaud their unified performance, it could use more twists and turns.

All in all, the band played very well and satisfied their audience immensely. This was probably the best gig I’ve been to at The Underground and hope to see more like it.

[Photo credit: Marie Sicola/Bullet]