I live on the East side of Los Angeles, Silver Lake-Echo Park, and too rarely venture on the West side to see shows, as there are already so many close by. But, on Thursday, I did venture to the west to see a band from the east side,… Seasons is from Highland Park, a neighborhood close to mine, and they were part of the line-up for KROQ’s Locals Only showcase at the famous Roxy on Sunset Boulevard.
Seasons’ psychedelic sound is hard to describe, passionate, exacerbated and romantic (although I don’t like this word since it does not mean anything it is supposed to mean these days), moody and dynamic, like a change of weather (or season?), a little chaotic, but what a beautiful chaos!
It is a large band, I counted up to seven on stage at one point, with the unusual addition of a violin and a synthesizer added to the guitars, bass drums and occasional Bango drums. The songs can languish with beaming guitars and keyboard, splashing like water under the sun, as was ‘Light, Lost’ (for which they even have a video directed by Chris j. Ewing), or can be tumultuous like ‘Always’ with a galloping rhythm, or just stay in between, with retro 60s-accents like ‘Ryan’s room’. The melodies were loosing themselves into the big drama of all these strings, that ardently agitated the atmosphere of the songs, which would eventually end up into some confident foot tapping.
All members sounded strong on stage, looking as different from each other than any of their songs, and putting together these complex, risky and convoluted tunes in which it was easy to get lost. Frontman Nik Garcia, on vocals and guitar, had this particular way to shout-explode his hurt-like vocals, while violin and guitar were plaintively crying.
They have already released 3 EPs entitled ‘Spring’, ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ (http://sseasons.bandcamp.com/album/winter), and a fourth one (‘Autumn’ I guess) is in the work. I just wonder what they will do next as they will be done with the seasons… but should we tell them there is only one season in Los Angeles?