Upon the completion of their second album, Lasting Echo, the band Fictionist stepped from the studio back onto the stage. Only the second show they’d played in a very long time, the Salt Lake City natives were warmly received by the Grind’s music-lovers, some who were new and some who remembered Fictionist’s performance here last spring which showcased material from their debut album, Invisible Hand. Followers of Fictionist were abuzz beneath the starry lights set up for the show, pleased that the new material of Lasting Echo proved even more richly-layered, spacey, and complex than that of Invisible Hand.
For this collection of winter-weary souls, hemmed in by the snow and gathered at the Grind on Friday night, the band’s ability to create a world from their music was a welcome respite. As Fictionist played, they fashioned spherical domains of sound populated by varied and experimental musical textures (jazz, funk, rock, etc), kept in orbit by a sense of rhythm as powerful as a gravitational force (kudos to drummer, Aaron Anderson)… Contained in Fictionist’s creations was a menagerie of sounds, rhythms and tempos which enabled the listener a twisting, turning musical journey, and the road that Fictionist unraveled was a thoroughly enjoyable one to travel. Enveloped in the Grind’s warmth and comfort, hot coffees in hand, the audience traveled the road with Fictionist into a world reminiscent of Pink Floyd and laseriums, the Beatles and psychedelia, but a world uniquely Fictionist, one in which they controlled the atmosphere…
On stage, Fictionist are masters of atmosphere. Depending on the song, they create the necessary heaviness required to give it form. The first track they played from the new album, titled Always, had weight like a stone: strong drums, fuzzy guitar, and wild screams that wrenched frontman Stuart Maxfield’s head right back. Always followed after the familiar Noisy Birds, the first song of the night, off of Invisible Hand. Fictionist’s mastery of atmosphere is most noticeable in songs like Noisy Birds, where the atmosphere journeys from heavy to light and back again, like in an orchestral movement. The song vacillates between the heavy, thumping ”you gotta hang your head like me” riff and the quieter expanses filled with eerie bird calls. Fictionist’s changing atmospheres created space within the song, the space required for the sound to fly, like a bird, which is fitting given the title.
The fashioning of atmosphere continued in slower, instrumental numbers like Song for B, which began sparsely, airy and light. This song illustrated Fictionist’s on-stage egalitarian nature. It was wonderful to see the band back-off as respective members took extended solos. Guitars and bass would cluster at one side of the stage and play quietly in order to watch and appreciate Jacob Jones’ swirling keys, or guitarist Maxfield would come forward with a soaring, caressing guitar solo while the others stayed behind. At other times, the lyrics themselves, dusky and curious, took center stage, in songs like Strangers in the Dark: “Every branch there hangs a dream, can’t decide which one to take…it’s making me insane.”
Later the band brought everyone to their feet with covers of the Beatles’ Helter Skelter and I Want You (She’s so Heavy). Stuart Maxfield and Brandon Kitterman traded off gravelly, screaming yelps, like those of McCartney at his feistiest, which made the young ladies dancing up front swoon. The crowning moment of the show, however, was the performance of The Well-Made Shadow, a song that began with eerie, Irish-folk- sounding violin over the sounds of caged wind. At the violin’s final quavering cry, the sinister tone was set: the bass came in thick and heavy and the song took off as Maxfield sang huskily about a “wicked affair,” asking, “Who’s that at the window? Who’s that looking in?” Tension mounted as Maxfield howled for all he was worth and Kitterman initiated a series of crescendoing guitar solos– the kind so smooth you can feel them in your bones, filling out all the little cracks– until finally the song ruptured! into an insanely-heavy Black Sabbath-type riff which pressed down on the audience like an invisible hand…everyone bent to its weight, every head bobbed in time. And if that wasn’t enough, snuck into all that Black Sabbath madness was Jacob Jones’ wicked electric-organ-style riff reminiscent of Alan Price from the Animals!
To settle everyone, Fictionist next launched into Suffering Angel, in which Maxfield sang of a “heart frozen in winter’s icy breath,“ and memories that needed to be hidden “in a place where you can find them on a rainy day.” Wispy vocal harmonies strung across fluid, Santana-like guitar soloing–sounded like raindrops and water rivulets–created the somber atmosphere required for a rainy-day song. For Fictionist, though, even the slow songs build up to a crazy, wave-crashing finish, and Suffering Angel followed suit, as the musicians visibly lost themselves in the music so that the audience, too, could be lost. This segued well into their final number, one marked by “whoa-oh-oh-oh” refrains which started softly and built up as the audience joined in. In time, the sweet refrains built up so strongly that Maxfield quit singing entirely and spread out to recline on the growing angel chorus which he had introduced a couple minutes earlier.
After this little bit of lounging, the audience insisted on an encore. Fictionist closed with Have Mercy, the final, resonating track on Lasting Echo. In accordance with atmosphere, the snow fell thickly just outside the windows as one-and-all were lulled by Maxfield’s delicate vocals and guitar…a nice finish to a solid evening of music.

-Sarah Thomas

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