Sylvan Esso’s Electro-Folk Celebration

Sylvan Esso’s Electro-Folk Celebration

Listening to Sylvan Esso on record, it’s easy to forget there are only two people involved in the music. Onstage, however, that fact is strikingly clear the minute their set begins. Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn walk out and assume their positions — he at his computer and she at the microphone — and that’s where it becomes clear that Sylvan Esso have no trouble filling the visual space. As the chiming groove of “Coffee” pinged around the scene, Meath took to graceful, fluid dancing, embracing the rhythms and even posing like a kung-fu warrior. Sanborn, meanwhile, twisted his lanky arms around his body and bobbed like a buoy. Their hits (“Hey Mami” and “Play It Right”) still sounded fresh after a more than a year, and a new tune was maybe even better than those. That’s all proof that while a Sylvan Esso record is an intimate session with yourself, a Sylvan Esso show feels like a celebration, because it is.