I didn’t go to the first or second night of KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, I had too much work and was not that convinced I should spend that much money, but there was a live stream of the show that I partially watched on sunday night. I forgot it started so early (6pm) so I missed the first bands, but I caught the show at the end of Neon Trees performance, which I could have easily skipped. The frontman was singing some rock Christmas song with a shaved head and a Mohawk, and I was bored after one minute. No, after 5 minutes I wanted him to stop really badly.
Florence & The Machine was next, a dramatic presence on stage, with a long mousseline white dress, in front of red roses growing around the mic stand, and a powerful voice coming from a tall and fragile red head woman, looking like a vision from an English fairy tale. But I must be the only one who has not listened to ‘Lungs’ yet. It was pop-soul-dance with a semi gothic visual, her voice always spectacular when she was singing her long soaring anthems. It’s obvious the woman got some impressive chords and lungs, but I don’t know, I kept imagining James Cameron using her for his next movie soundtrack and this spoiled everything.
The Black Keys started their set with their classic ‘Your touch’. What else can I say that I haven’t said about the dynamic bluesy duo? Seeing them live is 100% more intense than seeing them on a screen, but they still had style and presence on the small format. I thought they sounded a little bit poppier than the last time I saw them at the Palladium, especially when Dan Auerbach took his falsetto voice on some songs. ‘Next girl’ was digging that heavy bluesy groove, and they were accompanied by a wobbling synth on ‘Chop and change’ and other songs, since there were two other musicians who were playing with them.
‘Howlin’ for you’ has that repetitive primitive melody, a special duel guitar-drums, and Patrick Carney, on drums, was destroying them as usual. They also did the very satisfying ‘Ten cent pistol’, and they ended up with a killing version of ‘I got mine’ that they played only by themselves; this is how I remember them the most, with dangerously aggressive guitar riffs and manic drum beats.
‘We don’t have much time so we are gonna try to play as many songs as we can for you’, said Dan Auerbach after two songs, and it was about the same thing for all the bands, the talking was minimal as they all wanted to play the maximum of songs.
Then, ex-Killers Brandon Flowers took the stage, but I have never been a fan of the band and he sounded quite like them, with songs built around a lot of chorus. However, some songs like ‘Magdalena’ may be interesting-sounding if I get the chance to listen to them again.
He did an oldie, a cover of Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davies Eyes’, then announced a brand new song ‘Jilted lovers and broken hearts’… over all, some of his tunes sounded a little Springsteen-esque with lighter arrangements, more synth and a more stressed-out voice. He said he wanted to revisit a couple of Killers songs during his solo adventure, and he did a reworked version of ‘When we were young’ all stripped down and quiet. He continued with ‘Only the young’ which was not that Springsteen-y anymore, but more Killers material, and ended up with a real Killers song ‘Mr Brightside’
Next was probably my favorite band of the night, Vampire Weekend, which only played half an hour but appropriately started with ‘Holidays’. They continued with ‘White Sky’ and gave a pretty colorful performance with their South-African-inspired-music, hip-hoping all the way through their set.
The vocals were a little loud and the voice of Ezra Koenig was sometimes covering the instruments, first time it has ever happened! ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’ was pretty much close to the original, dropping vocal harmonies, oozing vibrant rhythms, then, Ezra Koenig invited the crowd to sing along on ‘M79’ when there is this long woooooaaa, and the song was bubbling. He then sang ‘California English’, which seems a real challenge live with its fast weird rhythm, sounding as if it was sung backwards. The crowd became pretty crazy when they did a jumping and bouncing ‘Cousins’ and of course, ‘A-punk’, they were playing each one of their hits, one after another,… but do they have something else than hits?
They finished up their set with ‘Giving up the gun’, which they stretched a little bit (or it seemed) with a nice addition of drums and percussion, but before leaving, they had the time to play ‘Campus’, ‘Oxford Comma’, and ‘Walcott’, at a devilish speed.
Phoenix closed the night, I can’t believe a French band was actually headlining, what did I miss? When did they become so big to play KROQ Christmas party? But I should have paid attention, they have actually sold out the Hollywood Bowl this year!
I have found them a little boring to be honest, with quite repetitive vocal riffs, not in a good way. Their rock songs are danceable but I could not pinpoint any originality, any recognizable trick that the band would do as a signature, it’s generic music of the arena kind, and if singer Thomas Mars took a few crowd baths like a real rock god, it was a little too U2 for me.