There’s nothing quite like a Thievery Corporation show. The DC duo has worked for twenty years to combine culture and music in a way unlike any other band on the circuit. This past weekend, they brought their sold out to New York City’s Terminal 5.
It was a Friday night and spirits were high amongst the 3000-capacity crowd. Thievery kicked things off with singer Natalia Clavier before bringing LouLou Ghelichkhani to the stage. The 1-2 love-punch of beauty rendered half the audience swooning and we weren’t even ten minutes deep. The energy thickened as Ras Puma, Sleepy Wonder, Mr. Lif, and See-i came out to join the party. Through the multiple guests, Thievery Corp is plucking sounds from around the world and showcasing them in a way that is extraordinarily rare. Sure, you can find a reggae night in Brooklyn or hear some Bossanova in the East Village, but never will you see these worldly sounds on a stage as grand as Terminal 5’s. If Thievery has done one thing correctly over their tenure, it’s facilitate the listening to music that otherwise wouldn’t be heard by tens of thousands of Americans. If you’ve seen them, surely you can attest to that.
The show is ran almost like a benefit show of sorts, with special guests coming one after another for about two hours long. However, unlike benefit shows, Thievery is a well-oiled machine who has had hundreds of rehearsals, resulting in a set that makes sense even though it spins you around the world in 120 minutes. Favorites like “Take My Soul,” “Culture of Fear,” “Overstand,” and “Warning Shots” got the crowd extra hyped, and a relatively unexpected cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain” was the icing on the cake. It wasn’t enough though, because the crowd demanded two encores from the Washington D.C.-based collective. It was the only fitting way to end an amazing night.
Check out some high quality, fan-shot footage of the “Fire on the Mountain” cover below.
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