Deer Park Avenue, Whiskey a Go Go, Monday January 23rd, 2012

Deer Park Avenue may be the name of a familiar road frequented by New Yorker teenagers, but it is also a young Los Angeles band fronted by two sisters Sarah and Stephanie Snyder respectively on guitar and drums, and Matt Bissonette on bass. The dynamic trio was playing at the famous Whiskey a Go Go on the Sunset Strip, a place where I rarely go (I am an East-side kind of person) but undoubtedly part of the city’s rock history,… hey,isn’t it where Black Sabbath announced their reunion tour lately? 

So how these two girls ended up playing in this prestigious place? For a very young band (they must have started just a few years ago) they have already built a following on line and there was a good crowd watching their dynamic performance on Monday night. Their power-pop-rock songs, fueled by Sarah’s guitar and her electric presence, were producing a totally radio-friendly melodic rock with a light dash of punk attitude (may be like a Green Day female touch), immediately engaging people in foot-tapping or hand-clapping. There were some catchy-as-soon-you-hear-them tunes, like‘Over Again’, which opened their set, announcing right away their fun, happy and energetic tone. 

Sarah’s bright and sweet vocals, often tainted of countrish accents, were most of the time backed up by Stephanie and Matt's,producing vocal harmonies which seemed to be quite part of their sound. ‘Millionaire’ has this sexy slow-building sound, with darker moments, which were suddenly lightened up with guitar power-chords and some ‘Hey hey. The songs were diverse enough, always driven by guitars and voices, some leaning toward the ballad-type like ‘Rescue me’, others toward the more hard-rocking-fast-driving type, like‘Waiting for you’ with its anthemic potential and power-pop chorus. 

With a real rock’n’roll attitude, Sarah was also the talker, announcing most of the songs, which actually feature on their newest release ‘Stop & Go’, frequently communicating with a large smile, advertising the band’s facebook page and showing a direct contact with her audience. 

They also played a new song filled with heavy guitars anda passionate delivery, before doing ‘a cover that we love’, which ended upbeing a lively rendition of The Who’s ‘My Generation’. Sure,why not?

They announced an album for next month – these girls sure keep themselves very busy – and I would not be surprised to hear one of their loud Los Angeles-via-New-York anthemic riffs on the airwaves soon.