Neil Halstead is an English accoustic pop/folk singer song writer who plays mostly beautiful but melancholy music.  He, like his opener, was wearing plaid, though his was mainly red.  He started by himself and his first song would set the standard of the melancholy tone, but I immediately identified a corny lyric line which hurt the song.  The rest of the set did not have any life changing lyrics, but none seemed as bad as the initial ones I caught.  At this point I noticed the sparse crowd present at the opener had doubled.  After the song, the bass and guitar player were invited onto the stage.  This song went to another level, but it was not because of the added instruments.  It simply was a good song, perhaps the best of the night.  

The fifth song stopped suddenly in the beginning when Neil and the other guitarist exchanged looks and Neil said, "Did we change it?  I changed it.  Sorry for that."  He takes his hat off as if that was the problem and asked the crowd to come in closer which they did.  They still left some room in the front.  There was another song with a false start, but no other major errors.  Zach Gill was called up mid set to play in three songs, but unfortunately these songs were not that interesting.  This was not Gill's doing, but a bad coincidence.  After a couple more engaging songs Neil asked the crowd if they were having a good time almost as if he actually was unsure if it was true.  He received a decent response though.  

During the wait for an encore, an apparent friend of the band came on stage and claimed he was going to do a magic trick.  What he tried to do was cover the bass guitar with his unexpectedly long beanie.  He failed and the band returned.  The last two songs were pretty well done, but the sound guy fell asleep at the switch and left the guitar player without sound.  After the guitar player was staring at him for a while, Neil suddenly stopped the song and asked the guitar sound to be turned on and they continued on.  The music overall was pure and mostly melancholy with only a couple exceptions.  A little over half of the songs were good and distinctive, while more than a few were not too memorable and looking back sounded much alike with the same singing method delivered.  This is not to say the songs are bad, because they are still well done and have Neil's soothing voice to hold them up.  All in all a good show.