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City And Colour, Live In Concert: Newport Folk 2012

Folk Alley | By Stephen Thompson
Published July 28, 2012 at 3:16 PM EDT
City and Colour performs on the Harbor Stage at the Newport Folk Festival.
Erik Jacobs
/
Erik Jacobs for NPR
City and Colour performs on the Harbor Stage at the Newport Folk Festival.

City and Colour certainly functions as a band, but it's largely a vehicle for the solo songwriting of Dallas Green (his name, after all, includes a city and a color), who got his start in the heavy rock group Alexisonfire. Based in Ontario, Green left behind his old band's post-hardcore sound to focus on a bold, confessional, singer-songwriterly approach. His lyrics can be gritty and personal — the City and Colour pseudonym first arose out of Green's fear of putting too much of himself out there — but they're more powerful for the way the singer bares his heart without hiding behind too much bluster.

Little Hell, City and Colour's third full-length album since Green first went solo in 2004, finds the singer refining an increasingly confident mix of folk, blues and rock music — he's a singer-songwriter with a guitar, sure, but he's got a flair for singing boldly and clearly while making his struggles feel universal. City and Colour performs here as part of the 2012 Newport Folk Festival, recorded live on Saturday, July 28 in Newport, R.I.

Set List:

  • "We Found Each Other in the Dark"

  • "Sleeping Sickness"

  • "Body in a Box"

  • "Waiting..."

  • "Hello, I'm in Delaware"

  • "What Makes a Man"

  • "The Grand Optimist"

  • "Fragile Bird"

  • "Silver and Gold"

  • "Comin' Home"

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    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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