Tuesday, March 20 brought the city of Boston beautiful weather by day and beautiful music by night. At around 7:15 pm the doors of the Red Room, a cozy little red space on Boylston Street, were opened to a comfortably-sized crowd of around a hundred who had come to see indie group Eisley perform on the Boston leg of their Deep Space Tour.
Comprised of five siblings, three sisters and two brothers from Texas, Eisley is known for its lush melodies and wonderfully fantastical lyrics. This is complemented by the rich vocals of lead singers Sherri and Stacy DuPree, whose voices in harmony give their music an ethereal quality. Their new EP Deep Space, after which their tour is named, follows their third studio album, The Valley, and finds the group fantasizing about love, freedom, and solidarity in a sweet set of five tracks.
Eisley has a dedicated fan following. The crowd may have been small, but it made up for this with its enthusiasm. On hearing the opening notes of their first song of the night, “Smarter,” it was easy to see why: jumping headfirst into a set of three songs, the siblings proved that they could live up to the high expectations set by their albums. Playing with equal parts energy and intensity, the siblings seem to have transformed their family bonds into musical ones as they displayed a level of intimacy and comfort between each other that is usually hard to find onstage. Sherri’s firecracker persona complete with pink-and-blue hair and stenciled guitar contrasted with Stacy’s quiet intensity on the keyboard.
Their set, which lasted an hour and fifteen because of Boston’s 11 pm curfew, included a collection of songs from both old albums and new. The crowd sang along adoringly when they performed “Marvelous Things,” the whimsical track that shot them to fame. The crowd then cheered on in a show of support when the third sister, Chauntelle DuPree, who usually sticks to playing guitar (sensationally), belted out the punch line chorus of “Watch It Die.”
They interacted with their attentive audience only around halfway through their set due to the time constraint, but their lively banter added to the growing atmosphere of cozy intimacy in the room. The cherry on top was when Sherri sang her new song, “192 Days” off the new album. The song, written for her husband, is a love drunk ditty set exactly 192 days after she first met him, and was performed only by the sisters, as the boys momentarily left the stage.
The sweet lyrics, so at odds with her pseudo tough-girl appearance, showcase part of what makes Eisley so unique as a band. This musically endowed family proves time and time again that a band can be current and bold but faithful and reverent all at the same time. The perfect end to the concert? Walking out into the fresh spring night. It might as well have been a continuation of their music.
