I know every band has to come up with something, but why these Chewbacca masks The Finches? I would understand feather masks, like the one worn by your keyboardist, but these hairy things you put in front of your faces during your show at the Silver Lake Jubilee? A little weird for a band who played some pretty, melodious and quiet songs.
The five of them started with an almost a cappella beginning, slowly progressing with their vocal-harmonies-filled songs, certainly evoking the folky 60s, borrowing some psychedelic vibe of the 70s.
Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, the main female singer, had a pretty voice, clear and strong, floating at ease above the guitars, which had some occasional surf accents, the discreet keyboard and the reserved drumming. Her vocals made me think about Jenny Lewis’, and some of their songs had effectively that Rilo Kiley’s delivery, although others were a little bit disconcerting.
With that many people on stage, they had the potential to do more sonic damage, but the whole set stayed on the same melancholic spacey level, like nostalgic lullabies slowly unfolding themselves. There were some new songs and old ones, and I just noted a few titles ‘The House under the Hill’ (may be an allusion to the San Francisco bay area where they are from), or the harmonious and melancholic ‘Steve’s Song’.
Yeah, definitively some accents of Lewis’ voice, but I could not tell if she was as cute as the Rilo Kiley’s frontgirl, these masks were definitively too odd.