Anna Lombard

Anna Lombard has the voice of an angel. She is a very talented woman with enormous potential. I enjoy listening to her CD where she was recorded in the studio and I looked forward to what I was expecting to be an electric stage performance. I was disappointed. First of all, Ms. Lombard's stage presence and "between songs" chatter leaves a great deal to be desired. For someone with amazing vocal and song-writing talent, and an elegant appearance, I found her weak, unenthusiastic, foul-mouthed, meaningless chatter to be unbecoming and in fact uncomfortable. In my opinion she appeared as though she could have been inebriated, but certainly unpolished. Second, the sound was all out of whack. I don't know if there was a sound engineer or if the musicians set their own, but Anna's lovely angelic voice was drowned out by an overpowering rhythm electric guitar. Similarly, the wonderful leads and riffs from the other guitarist in the band - which really give the songs their character - were drown out. I felt whomever was in charge of sound really did Anna Lombard and her songs a great injustice. Portland is a small city, kind of a peculiar little place with its own subculture. If Anna were doing a performance for the locals and her friends who love her and admire her and see her through rose colored glasses already then this was certainly fine. If, on the other hand, she wants to really make it big and go beyond the borders of Portland, Maine, which I think she has the potential to do, then she needs to do better. The Other Bones were very energetic. Lead Singer Loretta Allen has a powerful voice and engaging stage presence. She seemed a bit preoccupied with pushing buttons on her voice processor box and in my opinion overuses electronic voice effects such as autotune and harmonizer because she really can sing and I want to hear more of her voice. The keyboard player was more of a DJ or computer operator than a keyboard player as he spent most of his time starting and stopping preset/prerecorded loops. Guitarist was very good and the interaction between him and Loretta between songs was charming. Overall I enjoyed this band.