The Cosmonauts are four bright sparks who have played catchy if a little dark alt rock for two years in various variations and at Pianos on Wednesday night, played a nothing but pleasurable set of Echo And the Bunnymen quasi-psychedelic jams.
The band seemed so happy to be on stage and sang to friends and family with one dedication after another, a little inside baseball but whatever, they paid it off with a lot of sturdy numbers and only one that needs serious work, introduced as a newbie.
Three quarters of the way thru, the drummer tears off his tee and the guitarist crouches on the ground and a simpler number like, well, like "Bronx Taco". is brought up short on their ambitions. Both songs are really, really good.
You can tell a band with a ton of potential. You don't need the song titles to get the sense of the songs uniqueness. At least three hit my pleasure zone and maneuvered between generic and indelible. The leader, , Jack, plays it just right and lets the songs do the work for him and quite often a line becomes a mantra:
"Songs about sex"
"I feel alright"
"I've tried my best and nothing works"
Singer and guitarists, Jack looks like a young Steve Coogan and sounds like a teenage Jim Morrison. He has an easy rapport on stage and feeds off second guitarist daniel quite nicely. Brendan is a classic quiet one bassist and drummer Tom looks as though he could hit it harder given the chance.
The restraint comes with the territory, making a mess out of Jack's truculant request for the audience to do some dancing. Play dance music and maybe they will. but that isn't this. For all the friendliness of the band, the music is on the dark side. A brooding sound which jams out with a sense of complete control.
Lots of potential here, especially on the penultimate number "My Fair Lady"? Any way it goes "Try to say it right and say goodnight" which makes perfect sense to me. Check em out on their FB: http://www.facebook.com/CosmonautNYC?sk=info#!/CosmonautNYC?sk=info
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