Lavender Diamond is a band like any others, their cute front woman Becky Star – she may think she is a bird and totally sings like one – is always talking about our wonderful world and cannot stop celebrating the earth, ‘the best planet she has ever lived on’, and the musicians play these folksy, countrified and gentle songs in a delicate manner.
Where current bands look for complexity and layered detours, they go for simplicity and straightforward lyrics, which could almost sound like lazy writing if they weren’t sung by Star’s ethereal vocals. This woman can painlessly reach highs that many only dream of, and her voice approaches perfection each time,.. well she is in fact a true classically trained soprano, and goes into operatic delivery many times during a show.
The charming Becky and her band have a current Monday free residency at the Echo, and I decided to go see them despite the late hour on a week day…. I actually remember seeing her a long time ago, opening for Jenny Lewis at Spaceland, and was totally impressed by her aerie pipes, and amused by her odd stage presence.
Last night, she played again this wide-eyed curious character, in love with the whole world, telling pointless stories or obvious non-sense with awkward hesitations between songs. She was in fact the only one doing the talking and it could become quite bizarre, as she was always coming up with sentences containing an impressive number of superlatives, or platitudes about, again, planet Earth… She managed to always say vague things with the largest smile in the universe, and even when she made the trite declaration, ‘We are gonna play music,… it’s gonna be a series of songs…’ it sounded marvelous. The musicians played in the most subtle manner, with a delicate drumming and a restrained sound to showcase Becky’s voice, since Lavender Diamond is all about this crystalline birdie sound.
On stage, she moved like a ballerina or graciously danced on their most upbeat songs which could even had a country cabaret side, or even invited friends on stage to form a chorale singing ‘Oh My Beautiful World’, a song literally filled with a bottomless love for everything.
They were promoting their new album ‘Incorruptible Heart’ which will only be released on September 25 via OK Go’s label Paracadute… I can totally see how Becky Star’s rants aren’t for everybody, but the Silver Lake/Echo Park crowd totally loved her and her precious, pristine delivery.
She is a rare artist, and she doesn’t care to look a little freakish… but now I want to hear all these stories she wanted to tell us after the show.
