Cameron Blake Band | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam™
The 13th Floor is by far one of the most picturesque venues in Baltimore, with its dim, red-tinged lighting, cocktail lounge atmosphere, and panoramic view of the city from the top floor of the Belvedere Hotel. But it can also be a difficult environment to see a show if the band playing there is relatively quiet and the folks at the bar are feeling chatty, as was the case Thursday night. But the evening's entertainment, the
, was worth the effort of occasionally straining to hear, and eventually the band managed to overpower the din and fill the room with their ornate, dramatic pop/rock.
Singer-songwriter Cameron Blake, a Peabody Conservatory graduate, has arranged around him a large and skilled band, which began its set on Thursday with five members, and added a sixth later that night. In the first few songs, as a quintet, his vocals and piano were accompanied by violin, cello and two percussionists for a somewhat timid chamber pop sound. The drummer, sitting behind a full set, played with splashy confidence, but it was clear he was holding back so as not to drowned out the string section. Blake came off as a mild, bookish presence, seated at his keyboard and introducing his songs with references to Sylvia Plath and John Steinbeck.
But the set took an unexpected turn into a more confident and contemporary configuration when the band expanded to a sextet: an electric guitarist joined them on-stage, the cellist switched to bass guitar, and the auxiliary percussionist took over piano. Standing and singing with no instrument, Blake seemed more like the frontman of a proper rock band, albeit one whose songs still sometimes settled for a bland, sweeping grandeur reminiscent of British balladeers like Snow Patrol. He twitched and swung his arms and narrow frame around the small and crowded stage, and gradually commanded it.
As the Cameron Blake Band continued in its more rock-oriented lineup, the set progressed into songs that became more textured and interesting, with the piano still remaining prominent in the mix to the point of drowning out the guitar. One standout, "You Bought Me Twice," featured Blake playing what appeared to be some kind of typewriter that emitted melodic notes as her fingers rhythmically tapped on the keys, hinting towards a more inventive avant-garde side to the band's otherwise fairly traditional arrangements.
A self-described "worship band," the Cameron Blake Band sometimes played right into the stereotypes usually attributed to bands who, willingly or otherwise, have been cordoned off into the Christian rock community and rarely taken as seriously as other independent and unsigned rock artists. But Blake's songs rarely lapsed into simple, earnest messages of faith, and the band's instrumentation was unique enough that even when less than compelling, they at least weren't a generic alt-rock band. It would be interesting to catch them on another occasion, playing a more traditional venue than the 13th Floor, sharing a bill with other bands, to see how they measure up alongside secular indie bands covering similar musical territory.
