Ski Lodge at Pianos Bar

At first listen, Ski Lodge is a band that creates simple, light-hearted melodies that are both catchy and inviting. Yet beneath a placid exterior is a much more cerebral presence that is as rewarding as it is burdensome. 

Promoting their latest EP Trust, Ski Lodge performed to a packed crowd in an intimate backroom at Pianos in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Having formed in 2011, Ski Lodge is just barely past its infancy, but in the last four years they’ve landed tours with bands like Bear Hands and released a critically acclaimed album, Big Heart, which quickly gave them deserved momentum. The company at Pianos paid testament to their growing success, and their fans unabashedly sang along, anxiously awaiting the next song in the set list, making it difficult to believe that this band hasn’t been releasing music for decades.

Lead singer Andrew Marr summed up their identity as a band by stating that Ski Lodge “evoke an image of being warm by a fire, alone or with friends, while outside exists the cold and cruel winter.” There is a dark moodiness about Ski Lodge, with lyrics that are deeply focused on infidelity, loneliness, dysfunctional relationships and every existential struggle in between, but there’s a nostalgic feel to the bands sound that speaks to an older and wiser demographic. Much of their music weighs heavy on the Generation Y psyche that is stuck in a limbo between naïveté and earned wisdom in a way that feels late and early, old and new again.

Overall, Ski Lodge sounds how 80s nostalgia feels, and you can’t help but recall your first slow dance at the prom you thought you were too cool to go to. 

Lea Weatherby
Photos: Ken Arcara

For further information on Ski Lodge visit here.