The Allah-Las – how can they get away with a name like this? – came on the Sunset stage with their surfy wavy reverb soaked guitars and performed a perfect set of 60s-inspired songs.
Their sunny sound irremediably evokes the beach and a sort a of faux-vieux, although nothing sounded exactly like this in the 60s, but they make you think about The Shadows and these bands of the late 50s-early 60s, as their retro sound is a sort of revival of this music, tainted of breezy guitars.
I had seen them once at the Echo and when I heard them on the radio, I immediately recognized their song, the proof that they have ‘a’ sound, in spite of the fact that so many bands participate to this 60s revival.
Not much was happening on stage movement-wise, but that’s not what they were after, rather, they were looking for capturing the vibe of this sort of garage rock, with a real coolness in their attitude and bright notes running effortless. In particular Spencer Dunham, on bass, had these cool dancey moves that was always attracting my attention during their set
Most of their slick songs had hypnotic repetitive loops with a light touch of Dick-Dale-ish surf riffs, and were installing a druggy-psychedelic ambiance,…. But over everything, all this had a catchiness you couldn’t miss. Curiously, I thought that one of their songs was almost starting like this old Cornershop song, ‘Brimful of Asha’, and they obviously played their most famous one, ‘Catamaran’, which sounded like the soundtrack of a 60s cocktail party.
For their last two songs, drummer Matt Correia and singer Miles Michaud switched places and Dunham threw away to the crowd a full bag of maracas to give a more exotic feeling to their last instrumental, also heavy on the wah-wah pedal. And did I say druggy? One guy on my side was totally into it, closing his eyes, doing the air guitar during the whole time.