Their music is pretty hard to pin down I thought after listening to 3 or 4 of Infantree's songs during their performance at the Satellite on Monday night,… but it is a good thing, right? Not going into some old clichés, not channeling any band of the past, but building your own sound, it is actually a rare thing that very few manage to do.
The members of the Los Angeles quarter are very young but they write together these elaborate and sophisticated songs which translate their love for music and all their influences, as I read in an interview that Alex Vojdani, who is on vocals and guitar, grew up on Nirvana's ‘Nevermind’, but also Michael Jackson and 2pac, Matt Kronish, who is on vocals, guitar and banjo said his most influential album is Neil Young's Harvest, Donald Fisher, who is on vocals, bass, mandolin, and guitar loves Tom Waits, and Jordan Avesar, who is on drums, loves Radiohead!
It is not that you are going to hear all this in their music, but if I had to categorize it, I would say the songs had some folk influences, some classic rock, some country (there was even a banjo) doubled with subtle Hispanic-Latino riffs, and even something more classical? It was never obvious or predictable, but original, a little curious and enigmatic at times.
The vocals were mostly those of Alex Vojdani, but all of them were singing together most of the time, and the harmonies reminded me Fleet Foxes on one or two songs, but they would not stay in this territory very long and the whole thing sounded much more upbeat and diverse, alternating slow and fast bouncy-foot-tapping rhythms in the same song.
It was a lot about these guitars, multilayered and producing this elaborate sound, as I would have sworn that a violin or a horn were played at certain moments, but no, there were just these guitars.
Endorsed by Neil Young, they are signed to Vapor Records and their 2010 full-length album ‘Would Work’ was produced by longtime Neil Young collaborator Niko Bolas, as they have also played Young’s Bridge School Benefit festival.
They played a couple of songs that ‘they had never played before’, which shows how prolific and creative they are for such young guys, building up some dramatic and moody atmosphere, switching instruments, becoming gypsy-wild, and producing something even less expected: these short classical-guitar samples that would appear out of nowhere during Alex Vojdani’s plucking solos and that were making the musical experience quite unique.