Sometimes it takes a great deal to elevate my mood, my work is killing me, my love life is a miss, but why are all these people on stage so damn happy? They have to be on drugs or something,,,, What? 'Let’s your faith guide your fate'? And why are they singing about love and been in love with love…hippies! I rather be seeing some punk band spitting their rage and anger on a dark screen, instead of this folk-mystic Native American décor,… a cactus, bull horns… what is this odor? Are they burning sage? Why not a dreamcatcher when they are at it, oh but there is one, and a giant one, ‘Dream big’, shouted the girl of the band when pointing at it!
Am I having some existentialist crisis in a middle of The Mowgli’s set? All this overflow of super-positive emotions, all these uplifting oo-ooos, all these power choruses on ecstasy, all this jumping around could have either turned me nauseous or totally happy,… and I had no choice but to follow this tsunami of happiness. Seriously, the Mowgli’s, these dopamine-instant-boosters, were having a lot of fun on a Monday night at the Satellite where they have a residency for the month. The eight of them showed some agitation in stage embodying the caffeine-adrenaline-highs of their sing-along jangly choruses, and there was a lot of sing-along going on, I just got the feeling some people are about to visit the Satellite each Monday night in the following weeks!
Exhilarating? Over the top optimism? Over doing the love fest? Yes, yes, and yes, but it felt soooooooooo good!!! They often sang together to transform their earworm choruses into big tribe-family choirs and you could feel the warm friendship between them. They had a little of this Polyphonic Spree, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros hippie-cultish vibe, engaging the crowd to clap along, and their musical collective had for goal to raise heads, hands, legs and spirits in unison whether you were buying or not the in-your-face-love message.
They played all the songs of their last EP ‘Love’s Not Dead’, that our own Henry Sins reviewed a few weeks ago, plus a few other ones, embracing the same pop-folk than Mumford & Sons and having more fun than Fun.
‘Emily’ had a fierce drum entrance, ’Slowly Slowly’ was anything but slow and ‘Time’, almost performed a cappella with an acoustic guitar, had a special impact on the crowd with this line close to ‘And when I win the lottery, I’ll tell B.O.A. they can kiss my ass’.
They ended their set with their euphoric ‘San Francisco’ tune, almost ready for the next Advil commercial – and I am just saying this because it almost reminded me the song ‘Chugjug’, used in an Advil ad and sang by the LA band Family of the Year, which the Mowgli’s are coincidentally touring with next month! Actually it didn’t exactly end there, they had to come back for an encore with the Jungle Book song ‘I wanna be like you’, and some help of the audience.
Don’t miss the Mowgli’s, they will elevate your mood no mater what, with that overwhelming desire to make your day the brightest and the shiniest of all, they did just that for me even though, sorry guys, I will never let any faith guide my fate… But it’s not because you don’t buy the lyrics that you should ignore the sunny hooks.
Setlist
Emily
The Great Divide
Slowly, Slowly
Time
Leave it up to me
See I’m alive
Carry your will
Hi Hey There Hello
San Francisco
I wanna be like you