Wild Belle, Metro, Chicago, Illinois

Wild Belle was playing at Metro as part of Tomorrow Never Knows festival, an annual five night festival at several of Chicago’s most prominent independent music venues. I had attended the festival in 2014 for a night, and four nights in 2015 when there happened to be a bunch of acts that caught my eye. Unfortunately, though there were a few things I was moderately interested in this year, there wasn’t anything that was really pulling me to the festival. Nonetheless I hoped to go to at least one night to see something…anything. I settled on Wild Belle, who I had heard of but didn’t know well. The show was sold out, and I didn’t even have ticket. While having a few drinks before the show with some friends next door, I popped my head out to see if I could find a ticket. Before I finished my first pass, someone offered to sell me a ticket for half of face value. I guess he didn’t notice that there were others standing outside looking for a ticket. I would have paid face, someone else might have paid more.

I finished my drink next door, and shortly thereafter we wandered into Metro. Though we arrived during the opening act, a female guitarist/singer, her name escapes me and I didn’t see enough of it to warrant any type of description other than that I didn’t find it particularly engaging. We moved into position at our typical spot on the far left side towards the back, but out from underneath the overhang. Wild Belle is comprised of siblings Elliot and Natalie Bergman, who grew up in and around Chicago. She did most the singing, but didn’t play an instrument. He mostly stuck to backing vocals, but played a variety of instruments. He did take over lead vocals on at least one song. They were joined by five other musicians including a pair of back up vocalists.

I was anticipating upbeat indie pop, but both the band’s sound and the audience’s demeanor was a lot more subdued than I was anticipating. They remind me a bit of The Cardigans, the Swedish pop band from the 90’s with the hit “Lovefool.” Both bands had a light pop rock sound and are fronted by a pretty girl with platinum blonde hair. There just didn’t really seem to be any songs which the audience seemed really excited to hear. This was in contrast to a couple audience members that mentioned that that they were very excited for the show, and it would be one of the few concerts that they would likely attend all year. In the end, it was a pleasant show but didn’t particularly impress me.