Two great indie bands were playing at the Echoplex on Thursday night, one of the worst evenings of the week to go out late, as you already feel exhausted by the week, and it’s not the weekend yet! Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist a free ticket to see Afternoons and Mother Falcon.
I already knew about Afternoons, and honestly I still don’t understand why this band hasn’t blow up by now. They have everything to accomplish such thing, songs as catchy as hell, earworm anthems (just listen to ‘Say Yes’), a symphonic feeling mixed with a pop-bombast embedded in multi-voice harmonies, which even include that of an operatic singer. What else do you want? Oh I forgot, they also have a Shepard Fairey’s red and black logo coming as posters and stickers, designed in 2008 (according to the LA Weekly) because Shepard felt passionate about his friend Steven Scott’s music. Was it that long ago? Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones even played them regularly in his Jonesy’s Jukebox (on Indie 103.1) and they were on the up and up with My Morning Jacket’s manager, Girlie Action on their side, a deal with Chrysalis Records and things were happening for them… I saw them a couple of times and remember spotting some of these Fairey’s stickers in the streets…. then Afternoons disappeared…They reappeared with a new name Shadow Shadow Shade, and I saw them again, they even released an album that I really liked, but due to a series of very unlucky events – Indie 103.1 got cancelled, they had to change their moniker because of a confusion with another band, they lost their booking agent, got dumped by Chrysalis Records when it was bought by BMG Rights Management – they vanished once again… what a waste!
That’s why I was happy to see them going back to their roots, using their original name – did the Welch band The Afternoons disappear too? – playing their uplifting songs and even announcing a date for the album they never had the chance to release – via Eenie Meenie Records with that same Shepard Fairey’s art for the cover!
They deserve it they are good and last night was no exception, with a six-piece band, singers doing jubilant male-female multi-harmonies, and playing catchy but expansive songs, either familiar (‘Perfect Wilderness’) or intriguing by their original detours, never too weird but always grandiose thanks to Claire McKeown’s brilliant operatic howl. They certainly want to reach for drama with poignancy, emotion and a powerful bombastic sound that my camera (see the videos below) failed to catch in its beauty… and they made lots of people, who had visibly come for the second band, very happy and interested. A girl asked me if I knew the name of the band… ‘Oh I am going to google it’ she answered…
They felt like old friends and they truly are, frontmen Brian Canning and Steven Scott were also members of Irving, an Indie LA active in the mid 2000s, that I also liked, and that was part of the Ship Collective. Afternoons’ upcoming record ‘Say Yes’ is set to be released on October 21st, a very serendipitous combination of date and name when you’ll know that Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza, owner of the Ship Recording studio (and Elliott Smith’s friend) has co-produced and mixed the album.
More pictures of the show here.
