What can ‘brat pop’ possibly mean? You can decide later, but this is how the LA duo Holychild is defining their music, I can only admire people who manage to find a new way to describe their music and Liz Nistico and Louie Diller are good at this.
They were giving an in-store at Amoeba on Thursday, after a long tour and a show at the Troubadour the day before, but they certainly were more than a duo on stage, as the small space had been invaded with synth and drums, and many of them, and with the help of two extra musicians and two backup singers, they did celebrate their new album, ‘The Shape Of Brat Pop To Come’ released on Glassnote Records a few weeks ago.
Their sound is pop explosive, bouncy and hard hitting, yes all these drums are not just there to look pretty, but at the end, everyone will only look at frontgirl Liz Nistico who sings with these sweet child-like vocals while doing her restless sexy dance. Dressed in black and glittering gold, which seem to be the official Holychild colors, she was undulating her body, jumping in the crowd, interacting with people with a large smile, looking like a new Katy Perry bouncing on joyous electro-pop or rather like an optimistic Lykke Li on ecstasy. Their second song had some Brazil carnival ambiance and the whole set put sunshine over glitter, sweetness over another layer of candy pop… Their slower song had an R&B vibe, but again going to honeyed harmonies, with Liz and her two backup singers doing a very Jackson Five dance number during a song.
Okay, shiny people and candy-coated songs whose exuberant beats could have been made up by Robyn, but also smart and spicy lyrics injected in all this syrup ravaging the place, and for this, we have to go back to the brat-pop terminology, ‘Brat Pop is sarcastic pop art,’ explained Nistico to Spin a few days ago. ‘It aims to understand our culture’s obsession with perfection, money, fame, beauty, self, and how that shapes us. It’s my whole life and everything in it.’ That’s why their first EP already was ‘a collection of songs portraying the role of the contemporary woman in our culture,’ like the song ‘Happy With Me’, the last song they sang at Amoeba, was ‘spawned from the incessant images that are pushed at women daily, and my personal difficulty interacting as a human and not being pressured to look, act, or speak a certain way.’ This can explain the album artwork, a mouth-full of money surrounded by a pair of red lips and song titles like ‘Barbie Nation’ or ‘Plastered Smile’.
Nistico didn’t looked like a girl under pressure though, she was acting totally freely, and didn’t keep her glittering golden platform shoes for very long,… she ran in the middle of the Amoeba CDs and vinyl rows, flirting with a guy or two, being friendly aggressive with a large smile, falling on the ground a few times. The two backup guys were suddenly waving pompoms and their cheerleading spirit had turned them a bit into this other high-energy band fronted a dynamic and sexy girl (Sleigh Bells) Holychild just had added much more sunshine, glitter and gold sprinkles over these black pompoms
Setlist
Diamond on the Rebound
Running Behind
Barbie Nation
Money All Around
Nasty Girls
Regret You
Plastered Smile
You Made me Sick
Happy With Me
A few pictures of the show here.
