Black Taxi was one of our Featured Artists back in February and they finally came to DC last Tuesday to kick off their latest East Coast tour. The New York natives played a 12-song set with tracks from both their first album Things of that Nature and their latest, We Don’t Know Any Better. It was an experience to see how talented these four guys are live, especially with lead vocalist Ezra Huleatt and his ever-growing variety of instruments, all placed on his keyboard as one-stop shop for instrumental switch-ups.
They opened up with Friend from their latest album, warming up the growing crowd at DC9 with Ezra crooning “Be my friend tonight…” from his keyboard, followed by a jazzy trumpet solo alongside bassist Krisana Soponpong. It was followed by We Don’t Know Any Better, the track with the same name as the album, the song featuring main vocals from guitarist Bill Mayo. As Tightrope came up on the list the crowd went nuts, dancing along to the catchy track, making Black Taxi feel right at home on the diamond stage. We got to hear older tracks from their first album like Head on a Pike, Love Song for a Ghost, Up Here for Thinking, Down There for Dancing, and It’s a Ball. As we neared the end of the set, Black Taxi played their most popular hits from both albums: Hand, which also had Ezra joining Jason Holmes to hit cymbals, and Shoeshine, which the crowd sang “I left it all Sunday/ It was the day I met you…” right till the end.
To sum up, Black Taxi was a complete crowd pleaser and definitely a band everyone should see live. I also got to hear Vultures live, which is my favorite off the new album. It was a great night of wonderful music and I’m already counting the days till they come back for a show.
Check out our photos from the show just down below!
For the full set of photos, check out our Photo Gallery or our Facebook.
