Before the light show could begin or doors even opened for the Mowgli’s show I was ushered into a small room, thick with the aroma of Chinese food. I had to step over both Suki and Abby, the dog components of the band.
To my great relief, the group was one of the most relaxed and casual groups of people to sit with and I found my pre-show jitters calmed. The unflappable vocalist Katie Jayne Earl met all questions with smiles and even asked her own. When asked about the seemingly misplaced apostrophe in their name, Earl dispelled all theories quickly:
“If we left the apostrophe out of ‘The Mowgli’s’, we’d just be the Mowglis [pronounced mow-gliss]. After a while it just became a part of us. Who are these grammar lords to say we can’t use it?”
Following a great deal of laughter and jokes, I big my adieu and allowed the musicians to prepare for their show and made my way toward the Great Hall in The Coffman Student Union to get in line for the show. What I found there did not disappoint.
Finish Ticket, a synth-pop garage-rock opened the show with style, head banging away through shredding riffs and a pedal-induced hurricane that shook the speakers and even provided some unwanted feedback. Their presence was certainly felt by the crowd as a select group of three guys tried to mosh their way to happiness. Needless to say, the crowd has having none of it, but it did add an element of excitement. Mixing in with the rambunctious was a touch of melancholy through the slow, passionate and painfully-relevant ballad “Bring The Rain.”
After a brief interlude, the Mowgli’s practically burst onto the stage and belted out “Emily” without missing a beat, starting off the show fast paced and jubilant. The wild and free-spirited Mowgli’s lived up to their stage-presence reputation, chatting away as if the whole event was the most casual thing in the world.
The Mowgli’s have added Prince to their show’s guest list ever since they began touring. For this tour in particular, they also requested Mila Kunis be put on the guest list as well. Sadly, a brand new track was the only unanticipated guest to make an appearance. However, it made quite a splash by venturing away from sunny dispositioned folk-pop to eerily electronic synth-pop, best suited for those who enjoy a dancier side to their love-obsessed lyrics.
Between “The Great Divide,” “Clean Light” and “Waiting for the Dawn,” all of the band’s pop sing-alongs were ticked off the list. At one point, keyboardist David Appelbaum took the acoustic guitar reins of the normally slow and serious “Time” with a new, faster paced heart-beat, perfect for a live crowd.
Ending the set with a bang was “San Francisco”, the group’s most popular song. Lead singer Dieden nearly did a stage dive as he came right up to the fence in front of the crowd with the mic and hefted it out over the audience, urging every eager face to sing along. The crowd condensed itself in an attempt to get as close to Dieden as possible, though he never actually made it into the crowd. Even the members of Finish Ticket made their way back on stage to dance around and rock out with the Mowgli’s, capping off a satisfying performance.
