Checking out a Wednesday residency at the Echo, the two-girl-fronted-group Frank + Derol was a nice surprise for the beginning of the evening. With Codi Caraco’s ethereal vocals, Brandi Cyrus’ acoustic guitar, and an authentic catchy pop-sensibility, they gave us some explosive set filled with synth swirls and choruses of smooth vocal harmonies. Accompanied by two other guys on bass and drums, their set was quite dynamic and upbeat, and the quartet managed to produce dance floor numbers mixing hard beats with sweet harmonies, electronica with a folk-pop guitar sensibility. The two girls, who seemed to be very young, were moving with a real ease, having a really good time and a natural stage presence.
It’s always a mystery to me when I go to a club and know nothing about the bands which are performing so professionally,… where do they come from? Codi Caraco and Brandi Cyrus both have a long love story with music as, according to her bio, Codi is a classically trained pianist and singer who started writing songs in first grade, whereas Brandi – and yeah she is Miley’s older sister, and she kind of looks like her,… how come I had never heard of her? – was of course around music all her life and signed on as a tour guitarist a few years ago. They met 5 years ago, began writing songs together mixing their different sensibilities and formed their band Frank + Derol, picking a male alias with a sort of country-music flair as if they wanted hide their real female and musical identity. They already released an EP last September, and a full album is in preparation, planned to be out in 2013. The crowd, already large for a relatively early set, was responding very positively to the pulsating-dream-pop of ‘Barely Love You Too’, to the disco beats of ‘Lightning and Gold’, or to the whimsical sweetness of ‘Let it Go’, starting with innocence and a candy-coated melody, then morphing into real tough and exhilarating dance beats.
One thing was certain when watching them performing on Wednesday night, with their foot-stomping dance-y rhythms, high-pitched angelic vocals à la Ellie Goulding, and glittering synth swirls, the two girls sounded like alternative-pop princesses who take their music very seriously and already have a long music career behind them. I was kind of expecting to see Miley Cyrus jump on stage at any moment, thinking it must be hard to find an identity between a country dad and a pop diva sister, but I would not be surprised if pop charts have to deal very soon with Frank + Derol’s complex and hybrid sound.