As it stands, it takes something special to get these old bones out of my comfort zone and back into a discovery phase.

Coming across my desk by a couple of my CHPTR cohorts, I was more than pleasantly surprised having to cover Evan Konrad’s indoctrination to Los Angeles tonight. Initially, intending to catch Evan post NY dates and before his upcoming appearances at Lollapalooza and Aftershock, as a jaded and long in the tooth music writer, I have to honestly say that my cynical bar was all over the place before even knowing or hearing, Evan.

My, my, my, how I was wrong, and oh so thankful for our more active writers for putting me on to Mr. Konrad.

As one to watch what my peers say about any act I’m covering, I was more than impressed by the accolades that he’s had through this part of his career. With Lollapalooza’s upcoming date of August 1st as his official debut event, I’m more than willing to double down on Konrad’s ability to carve a path for himself in the current landscape of alt-pop personalities.

There are a few things that I internally hold as a barometer of someone to cover, and someone to “COVER” and keep an eye on, and with my current lack of visibility in the music world, I feel that it’s safe to say that Evan cross all of those metrics and then some.

The biggest lessons to gain from my time getting to see his public ‘practice session’ on behalf of our friends at Universal Music, I have these to say. Evan attacks the mic with the verbal aplomb and confidence of a pre-pop star Matt Bellamy. His ‘Muse-like’ vocal range and tendencies are set aside with a personality and aural manipulation that belies his age in this industry. (Having covered the Muse since their original tour, that’s a lot for me to say, and also indicative of my true vampiric age.) Konrad is very aware of his range and limits, yet attacks the music with a type of self-assuredness that is only exhibited by those singer-songwriters that we call stars now. Even at the end of his set, he masterfully manipulated the available crowd energy into his on-stage performance in such a way that the audience had no choice but to pay attention.

This alone while playing a happy hour set in the middle of Los Angeles, in the most culturally cynical part of the city, is impressive.

This is just the beginning for Konrad., he recently announced he’ll be making his debut performance at Lollapalooza on Friday, August 1st  with an appearance at Aftershock afterwards.

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