The British trio, Band of Skulls, was following Raphael Saadiq at the Annenberg Space for Photography, closing the night of the ‘Who Shot Rock & Roll” hosted by KCRW. If you think that there is nothing truly original about Saadiq’ soul, which owns almost everything to the mid-60s, you could say the same thing about Band of Skulls’ music: As soon as they played their first song, I had the Black Keys in mind, and later on Jack White’s the White Stripes. That said it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy their set of thunderous guitars and male-female harmonies, and I am well aware that my comparisons are not even original.
They were coming straight from Lollapalooza, and probably had escaped the deluge, but I am not sure as they didn’t mention it. They started right away playing their set of aggressive and sweaty bluesy garage rock with the titled song of their last effort ‘Sweet Sour’, and the crowd around me knew all the lyrics.The whole show was a series of visceral punches, thanks to Russell Marsden’s gratty-bluesy, and nervous guitar, Emma Richardson’s bass and Matt Hayward’s sledge-hammer drumming style.
So what could possibly differentiate them from the White Stripes or the Black Keys? Probably the vocals harmonies between Russell and Emma, and the bass that Richardson played front stage, dueling with Marsden at each song and meeting him middle stage to rock out the song ‘Patterns’; but it was the only moment of the show where they were near each other, as their moves were rather limited.
They played longer than Saadiq’s band, probably more than an hour with a set of 11 songs, and performing their thumping numbers like ‘Lies’, ‘The Devil Takes Care of Its Own’, which had even some metal-like riffs not too far from a Queen of the Stone Age’s approach, or even ‘Hollywood Bowl’ that Marsden dedicated to the crowd. He was rather talkative, and thanked us profusely, saying how happy they were to be back in Los Angeles.
Live, their big arena power sound was working marvelously on the audience, as people were dancing over the aggressive dark-disco rhythms of ‘Patterns’, and shouting the ‘Hey’ stomping ‘Hollywood Bowl’. It was a series of hard-hitting, guts-crushing chords – sometimes even Led-Zeppelin-esque (‘Sweet Sour’) or flirting with dark metal – blended with female-male vocal harmonies, suddenly going all poppy and melodious, as each song was managing to install a sweet balance between the two. Their voices were responding to each other on the playful ‘I Know What I Am’ and its ‘it’s all right it’s ok’ sing-along chorus, and there were hardly a slow moment, may be during ‘Wanderluster’ which sounded sadder. ‘You’re Not Pretty But You Got It Goin’ On’ that Marsden announced to be a love song, turned out to be in fact a mean number bringing the best psychedelic-metal guitar solo of the evening.
Browsing their two albums at home, it seemed they had played their more raucous and darker numbers, while ignoring their sweeter and calmer songs, and it was probably a good thing, as they would have been a let down from this high on beastly-bluesy-throbbing thunder…. But the question stays, are they recycling others’ sound? In fact, who cares, the White Stripes will never reform, and nobody knows what the Black Keys will do next. Band of Skulls sounded fresh and fantastic and they totally fooled me.
Setlist
Sweet Sour
Lies
Patterns
Wanderluster
Bruises
Hollywood Bowl
I Know What I Am
The Devil Takes Care of Its Own
You’re Not Pretty But You Got It Goin’ On
Light of the Morning
Death by Diamonds and Pearls
More pictures of the show here