Family of the Year at the Roxy on Thursday, August 11, 2011
On Thursday night, during this KROQ Locals Only showcase at the Roxy, was playing Family of the Year, a quintet whose members, 4 guys and an attractive girl, are from diverse parts of the country but have apparently found a home in LA like so many other bands.
They did an energetic-feel-good kind of a show, with catchy and joyous melodies big on male-female vocal harmonies, and songs with folk-story-telling-type lyrics.
Sometimes it is the case, some bands don’t really care about having one unique sound, as Family of the year essentially had two categories of tunes: some songs were deeply dipped into a new Americana-folk sound, a little Fleetwood Mac (yes, the vocal harmonies and the folkish long white skirt!), a good formula made of folky tambourines, soaring vocals, and foot-tapper-sing-along tunes, But some other songs had a clear indie-electronic intention, producing darker dance-beats launched by Christina Schroeter’s dreamy synth. Indeed, they were playing with this dichotomy that they seemed to control very well, although my restricted (?) mind had tendency to think they had to decide about a style!
During their folk-oriented numbers, their joyous exuberance on stage was a little bit Edward-Sharpe-and-the-Magnetic-Zeros inspired, minus the hippie-circus ambiance (although I may have smelt weed at the beginning of their set), and, conveniently, I read that both bands have toured together.
They played some new songs as they announced the release of a new EP on September 27th, and are working on a full album for next year.
And the second song they played ‘Chugjug’, let’s just say that Advil used it for one of that heard-too-many-times commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPa7ltzJXXQ), which always destroys the song’s attractiveness for me, but which is always a sign of success.
