Sir Sly has a free residency at the Echo every Wednesday in February, and I got the chance to check them out last week. The quintet – but they are originally a trio – unleashed a wild and youthful energy on stage at various degrees depending on the songs, but I could tell the crowd was liking their sound very much, already familiar to their songs since it was their third week of the residency. As I was beginning to get into their multi-synth music, hard-beaten by pounding drumming, I thought wait a minute, this guy sounds like… Chris Martin! I would not want to give a false impression, as sounding like Coldplay (and it was only true for some songs) isn’t necessary a good thing to my ears, but there certainly was some reminiscence in the poppy soaring melodies, as well as in the singer’s falsetto and his way of making ooo-ooos.
Many of their songs were nevertheless built around more muscular drumming than your average Coldplay tune, and the drum set was not in the traditional central back position but rather on the front side, making it very present in front of their forest of synths – four of them, no less. But I was trying to focus on Landon Jacobs’ dreamy-ghostly vocals, with a light rap-like delivery, and their dance-y tempos, generally going relatively slowly, with droning synth during ‘Ghost’, and accelerating during other songs.
‘Gold’ was probably their most catchy-at-the-first-listening tune, a dramatic number with explosive drumming and a big hook on repeat building tension with the intriguing line, ‘A mouth made of metal, pocket full of yellow, pocket full of gold – and I hope you find your dream’… are they the new Foster the People type of band? Are they gonna break big soon? It wouldn’t surprise me, I read that their tracks have generated some kind of hype, and their debut single was released by Neon Gold in the US (which produced singles for Passion Pit, Gotye, Marina and the Diamonds, Ellie Goulding) and by National Anthem in the UK, an English label behind Haim, Atlas Genius and Chvrches. Listen to ‘Gold’ below and to ‘Ghost’ captured during their live performance at the Echo.