When I walked into Schubas on Thursday evening I was met with the sight of a man playing a glowing green “space banjo,” sporting a mountain-man beard, a white suit, and, as the crowd learned later although they were never made visible, green skivvies that matched the banjo. The man in question was Mike Savino, aka Tall Tall Trees, a one-man indie folk outfit from New York. If you’re unfamiliar with the space banjo as an instrument, it deserves its own introduction – the thing served Savino as a string section, a percussion section, and an echo chamber, and it was amazing to hear the range of noises he coaxed forth from it. Savino played mainly from his 2012 album Moment. Due to technical difficulties the crowd had the pleasure of hearing the lovely “Nothingless” one and a half times after the banjo cut out halfway through the first time. Nobody seemed to mind.

The theme of the night was fantastic hair and, not to be one-upped by a mountain-man beard, Jesse Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius came onstage with matching french twists that climbed all the way to their foreheads. The fivesome, also out of New York, are powered by the dynamic vocals of Wolfe and Laessig, backed by a double percussion section and a guitar. You could almost feel the crackle of electricity created onstage by Wolfe and Laessig – the duo created harmonies that filled the venue from front to back and could hardly be contained in the small space. The line of the night came from Wildewoman, which was dedicated to the ladies of Chicago, “Her eyes are light and clear/and fearless like Chicago winds in the winter times/her hair…is never quite in place.” Yes and yes. Every lady in Chicago can relate to those fearless Chicago winds and the havoc it wrecks on every woman’s coiff – give it a listen: