Floater has won over many fans with its thrashing live shows that shake floors with music. But Floater fans were not opposed to a change Sunday, when the band showed its lighter side in an all-acoustic set at the WOW Hall.
“This is sort of like, ‘Welcome to our living room,’” said bassist/lead singer Rob Wynia. “It’s not something that we do very often — or very well.”
The band’s manager, Cassandra Thorpe, said this was its sixth all-acoustic show. Though the scene is relatively new for the band, Wynia was more modest than accurate — for they do it very well.
“They sound like they know what their doing,” audience member Kasey Wickman said.
This was Wickman’s first Floater show, and she said she would have thought they were an acoustic group if she hadn’t previously heard their CDs.
The audience clapped in support after every song and hollered in recognition when the band began to play acoustic versions of its heavier songs. But the acoustic set also allowed the band to play material that it doesn’t usually expose to the public.
After playing a new song, Wynia said, “I love it when people clap for songs they don’t know.”
In addition to their own repertoire, the band covered songs by Pete Townshend, Neil Young, U2 and Bauhaus.
“If you don’t listen to any Bauhaus, you should go buy some,” Wynia said to the audience.
Floater fan Will Biddle said that even when the band played covers, they still added the “Floater touch.”
“They’ve got a great way of combining rock with musicality and feeling,” he said. “Every song has feeling to them and feeling to everybody that hears them.”
Floater broke even more traditions by trading places in the band. The show began with all three members playing a guitar. In reverse, all three members huddled around the drum set at the end of the first set in percussive harmony.
Wynia even forfeited the stage for a song and let drummer Pete Cornett step up to the microphone. Cornett forgot the lyrics about halfway through, but continued singing and ad-libbed new lyrics, mocking his error. The audience loved it.
Even the WOW Hall deviated from the norm for the special occasion. Seats were laid out where the mosh pit would have normally been. The stage was decorated with candles and vegetation (there was a planted tree on the stage). Incense filled the air, and recorded classical music prefaced the show instead of more rock.
Thorpe said she was going for an MTV Unplugged-feel with the venue.
“We just wanted it to be the opposite of a normal Floater show,” she said.
Edith Sumaquial said the hall felt like a “java-esque venue where you just hang out and listen to music.”
Instead of coffee, the band sipped wine between songs.
But Floater is plugging in again and returning to WOW Hall on Oct. 12 for the show that Thorpe said “gets people hooked.”
Mason West is the senior Pulse reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be reached at [email protected].