When you name your band Last American Buffalo, you obviously have some intention, undoubtedly, the moniker inspires right away the whole Americana imagery, the plains of the wide wild West, with cowboys and indians… and the band’s music effectively showed quite a lot of Americana influence when I saw them on Monday night at the Satellite, the first day of their month residency.
Five on stage, forming a barrage of guitars and bass, these guys seemed to live the dream with their bluesy rock’ n’ roll, as they played a very dynamic set with the attitude of classic rock. I mean some of their songs gave me the Tom Petty vibe, or even the Los Lobos vibe, other ones were bluesy-er, or country-er, or just plain rock, and I thought who needs the Rolling Stones at the Echoplex when we have LAB at the Satellite all month long? They had taped LAB on their drum kit, that’s why I think they wouldn’t mind the acronym. One thing was sure, everything sounded familiar, and Kevin Compton’s vocals had this old-time classic tone of a country singer singing about heartbreaks in a bar populated by Jack Daniel’s drinkers, when the guitars are tuned to a powerful rhythm and blues mode Actually, the Satellite crowd is always more diverse than this, and these free Monday residencies attract a young crowd always eager to discover the next big thing.
Last American Buffalo wasn’t reinventing music – but the question still remains whether such a thing is possible – they were more interesting by channeling the idols of their rock pantheon – probably Zeppelin, Petty, Springsteen, Young,… I made this up, as I haven’t asked them! – and they were also more preoccupied to carry the torch in this EDM-dominated-entertainment-world. However, the music didn’t sound like a rehash of old classic tunes and was actually far from being uniform. On the contrary, the songs were rather eclectic, and the muddy bluesy mood of their opener ‘Move Me’ was just the mood of this particular song, as the rest of the set did place the range of their repertoire very wide.
Kevin Compton wasn’t the only one singing as guitarist Bryce Wayt, who was the more talkative and had a sort of Ron Wood je-ne-sais-quoi look, was also sometimes taking the lead or baking up on vocals. A little bit of these crying guitars and wah-wah pedal later, the tone was again going from country accent to a more Petty-esque direction. ‘This song is about cocaine’, said Crompton before the song ‘Come Down’, and this sounded more rock’ n’ roll than ever, with a first row of ‘foxy girls’, as Wayt called them, dancing their hearts out. Another song was apparently about the heavy subject of euthanasia, but it didn’t depress the mood of the evening for all that, ‘Need your Love’ was a fast rocking machine, and they closed with the slow Neil Young-esque ‘Maliblues’…. But the question remains, with so many references to the classics, can they still be called an indie band or are they an instant classic?
Setlist
Move Me
Hit Record
Lonely Spaceman
Come Down
Dallas
Reason & Rhyme
That Woman
Break my heart
Need your Love
Maliblues