On the stage of the Echoplex, Lo-Fang, real name Matthew Hemerlein, had hardly started his set of romantic, breezy, and emotional songs. The stage was very dark and I could barely see the two other musicians, a girl on keyboard and a drummer, but Hemerlein was himself switching between guitar and violin. I don’t know why – and it wasn’t his accent – but I thought his music had a sort of British pop vibe although he is an American, whose music has often been compared to James Blake’s. His quiet and soft songs were all tainted by a bit of classic folk-pop, R&B and electronic, sometimes very stripped down with lots of handclaps, other times melancholic with guitar and organ. With his versatile voice, he also reminded me of Active Child/Pat Grossi, and as soon as he was done, people wanted more, they asked for an encore that he couldn’t play due to the strict time schedule.
I found his music a bit sentimental in the austere sense of the term, but what do I know, he is apparently Lorde’s favorite, who even made an apparition during one of his shows at the Echo on December 9th… I missed that scoop! So the future sounds very good for Lo-Fang, he will be opening for Lorde in 2014 and he has an upcoming album entitled ‘Blue Film’ that he recorded all over the world, in Maryland, Cambodia, London, Nashville and Los Angeles.
Unfortunately I didn’t see much of Hindu Pirates, the band playing upstairs at the Echo almost at the same time, but they sounded poppy good, with layered fuzzy guitars and synth, catchy melodies including a bit of 60s psychedelia, and they looked so young too! Although they have hardly reached the drinking age, they may well be another surf-rock Californian band to follow in the future, a band with an explosive sound, which may be less punk than Fidlar, less retro-surf than the Allah-Las, and more upbeat than the Soft Pack, but certainly ready to please the crowd of young beach-goers.
Talking about surf-rock and pleasing crowds, Santoros did certainly bring the level of fun to another level, since, a large mosh pit was in action as soon as they started playing. Their folk-garage-surf-rock isn’t certainly real punk, it sounds rather sweet and melodic, but they have the drunken spirit of bands like Fildlar, Bleached, Pangea… With their Chicano long dark hair look, they have this south of the border flavor – there is even a ridiculous and outrageous story about some of them presenting Mexican IDs at a gig and being refused the entry of the bar! – but their music was heavily inspired by early rockabilly/British invasion. Many of their songs turned to be driven by extended instrumentals with a true chaotic party-all-night ambiance.
Avid Dancer, on the stage of the Echoplex, was also delivering some borderline nostalgia, as I found their rocking numbers being quite 60-70s-influenced? I read that Frontman Jacob Dillan Summers is surprisingly a former US marine turned musician-songwriter – although it’s not totally surprising, he certainly has the physic. I missed the beginning of their performance, as it was impossible to see everyone’s complete set, but when I caught them, they were playing some powerful, muscular psych-pop, interestingly decorated by Summers’ sensible, bright and almost fragile vocals. It was surely a delicate balance to achieve, and some of his numbers sounded quieter, all surrounded by a complex retro haze.
The last band I saw after this exhausting but fun night was Fever the Ghost, and I would say that this quartet was a bit more than music. There obviously was mise-en-scene during their set, with all the evocation of an acid trip and some serious rock opera theatricality; plus two of them had sort of a Tommy-Roger-Daltrey-blond-curly-hair look! Beside the colorful synth, the sparkling, glittering lights, and the psychedelic ambiance, the music was a bit weird, I didn’t make much sense of it, but too much drug is never good for the attention, right? I first thought it was a dive into the psych-pop of the 70s, and if some numbers were really into this kind of thing (‘Rounder’), after a few songs, I wasn’t so sure anymore. MGMT? It was a bit experimental, a bit crazy, a bit ADD, quite de-structured, and often disorienting,… but that’s the thing with drugs. At the top of this all the girls around me were jumping and bouncing and the singer/guitarist’s voice was heavily distorted. But they sure rocked the place, and these guys will be soon ready for the big arena tour with that kind of sound.
