'We are from Colorado and we brought a little bit of the mountains with us’,.. I paraphrase a little, but this is about what Candy Claws’ frontman, Ryan Hover said before starting the band’s set at the Echo on Wednesday night, in order to explain the polychromatic set of fuzzy images projected on the band members during the show, … ‘If you have any questions about the images, feel free to ask!’, he had such a weird way to address the crowd, speaking with this soft, low, super calm voice, just the way he was singing these curious lo-fi (the term is even weak) spacey songs. Let me rephrase this, actually the vocals he was singing in duo with Kay Bertholf, were totally undecipherable, hushed, and making an odd dreamy composition.
But a Candy Claws’ show is a trip to weirdland, a sunny-happy-childish kind of land, and I really wanted to drink the same Cool-Aid or whatever they had, since they sounded so serene, in a half-stoned, half-hilarious kind-of-way. Or may be it was a forest land, with all these images of nature on their bodies making them very earthy, and the joyous girl who was making this slow backup dancing with the tambourine behind them, may have been trying to gather all the animals of the forest all along, I don’t know, you could have come up with any story with such a spectacle.
It was a little difficult to follow their melodies, when you could hear one, it was suddenly morphing into something else, as their songs sounded like a curious collage of eerie synth and floating guitar, with these whispered-daydreamed vocals, and spare rhythms created by two enthusiastic smiling girls.
The five of them did several medley of their songs, and even covered a song from their favorite band Starflyer 59, and in this alternate universe, some people were finding the way to follow the beats, head banging in the shoegaze of this fuzzy wrapping sound that, I must admit, I was having a hard time to process; but I have never get Animal Collective for example, and I was finding some similarities here and there.
And the mysterious forest theme? Of course, it completely escaped me live, but all the lyrics from their last album, ‘Hidden Lands’ were taken from Richard Ketchum’s 1970 nature book ‘The Secret Life of the Forest’.
I have read a lot of comparisons drawn between Candy Claws’ music and the Beach Boys’ in the press, something that didn't strike me live, but was more perceptible when I listened to their album on line; a strange album as each track actually contains a sample of every other song on the album, which could explain the overwhelming homogeneity of the sound. But if there is any Pet Sounds in their sonic haze, it had to be filtered through some kaleidoscopic sunglasses.