Outside the Waiting Room the surrounding streets were barely visible under a fresh layer of quickly falling snow. The windows were fogged over and the snowfall showed no indication of slowing down. Mounds of snow lined the path leading to the venue.
The Waiting Room would have looked vacant from the outside. You wouldn’t have thought there were hundreds of people inside, dancing their hearts out.
Cherub, the musical duo consisting of Jason Huber and Jordan Kelley, put on a concert filled with laughs, deep grooves and funky dance moves Wednesday night at the Waiting Room.
Over the past two years, Huber and Kelley have experienced a breakthrough in their popularity.
The band has finally found mainstream success, spearheaded by their widely popular hit single “Doses and Mimosas,” and have performed at some of the highest profile music festivals in the world, such as Lollapalooza and Outer Lands.
On Wednesday, the band brought their talents to Buffalo.
Aside from their fun-loving electropop music, Cherub is known for their high-energy, interactive live performances.
The duo, bathed in the Waiting Room’s flashing neon lights, was comfortable on stage. They closed their eyes, lost in the groove of their own music.
The performers give off a sense of ease, as if this was what they were born to do.
And, perhaps they were.
Before Huber and Kelley met during Huber’s freshman year in college the two had already been involved in numerous musical projects, Huber said.
Both of the men were DJs at the time, trying to do what they do now – perform in the spotlight.
It’s not their sense of ease that truly stands out.
The band exudes this childish, nothing-can-stop-me attitude in their music and performances.
At one point in the show, an inebriated crowd member yelled at the band to take their shirts off.
Huber and Kelley, obviously amused, stopped playing mid-song to point at the guy and yell: “You take your shirt off man!”
Despite how natural they make it look onstage, Kelley said their music is the result of long hours spent perfecting it in the studio.
Kelley said part of the band’s advantages come from the amount of time and effort they put into customizing their diverse sound.
“All of our music tends to be lighthearted and upbeat music,” Kelley said. “We build out songs in the studio first and put it together for our live shows. We can really build our songs from the ground up that way – its more free and creative.”
Katie Walsh, a junior geography major, has been a Cherub fan since their first mixtape titled, MoM & DaD.
“I thought they had a great sound and an incredibly infective energy,” Walsh said after the show. “My favorite part of the show was when Jason Huber came to the edge of the stage to give my friend his bottle of water because he looked thirsty.”
While listening to and watching the band, it’s easy to get the impression they are genuine, that the band’s free-spirited music is illustrative of Huber and Kelley’s real personalities.
“I’m living for the moment,” the band sings on their song “Jazzercise ’95.”
The crowd at the Waiting Room, mostly young adults ages 20-25, speaks to the band’s youthful allure.
Taylor Welencsics, a 21-year-old from Rochester, drove through a snowstorm to see Cherub play at the Waiting Room.
“I came here for the music,” Welencsics said.
He originally planned on staying only for the warm-up act, Mystery Skulls, an electro DJ, but ended up staying to see Cherub because of the atmosphere.
Huber, jokingly, described his ideal live concert atmosphere as “wet.”
“I want a wet show – wetter is better,” he said.
On Wednesday, Cherub opened their show with their song “Disco Sh*t.”
“This is that Disco sh*t that makes you feel alive,” the band sang. “And makes you forget all about the time.”
One gets the feeling the core of Cherub’s musical identity is personified by their fans – a carefree crowd of high school and college aged kids spraying their arms, legs, hands and feet in crazy directions.
Pure, unadulterated fun.
email: arts@ubspectrum.com
