Another year is gone — and they seem shorter and shorter as I age — but Los Angeles is now celebrating the end of the year with a big splash! It was the second time that Grand Park downtown LA had this celebration, and it is bound to grow bigger every year… What about three stages this year? Since the place has been tested by Jay Z’ Made in America festival this summer, the organizers seem to push the limits and despite the frigid temperatures – we had the coldest night of the year – there were a lot of people out there, waiting for midnight, and all eyes on the City Hall, whose façade was once again used for a fantastic light show, celebrating our city (with the obligatory hashtag #lastory) just before midnight. See, our hipster mayor wants to defeat New York, he wants to make this ball descending on Times Square every year look totally stupid in comparison, and I must say that was truly impressed by the creative spectacle.
Of course, it is a family affair, plus the subway was totally free after 9 pm, so people had no excuse for not going, except for the temperatures! ‘It’s so cold I can’t feel my face’ said singer Dorothy Martin just before the big 12:00. This would have probably make any New Yorker laugh very hard, and attend the whole thing in summer outfit, but it was really cold for any Los Angelinos.
They had announced an eclectic series of local artists performing on three music stages, which was making things more complicated than last year, but since one stage was only for DJs, I opted for the two other stages and managed to see more or less 5 bands before midnight. This looked much more like a mini festival, and I started the festivities with the delicious Mr. Little Jeans, who looked like a Disney princess: she had gracious gestures which seemed to welcome everybody, a charming and gentle croon and slow dance moves over a joyful and catchy electro-pop. Last time I had seen her, it was on the tiny and intimate Amoeba stage, but her expansive sound, only served by a guy behind a synth and a guitar, was working very well on the large stage. She was talking between songs, looked thrilled to be there, like a happy Lykke Li,… because who wants to feel sad on New Year’s Eve? ‘Welcome to my neighborhood’, she said as if she wanted to show her appreciation for the city, ‘Are you ready for 2015?’… ‘I see people singing the lyrics and this makes me very happy!’ She played some of her most famous tunes like the sweet and fun earworm ‘Rescue Song’, ‘Runaway’, ‘Oh Sailor’ with its catchy children chorus, and her beloved version of Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’, ending with ‘Good Mistake’ which turned the place into a real dance floor. And did she say that one of her songs was on the soundtrack of Ironman 3?
I ran to the other stage to catch the end of the set of Run River North, a large all-Korean folk ensemble which has totally embraced Americana and the Mumford & Sons wave. They too were very happy to be there and gave a joyful and upbeat performance despite the fact that a few girls in the band seemed to be freezing. Their self-titled and debut album was produced by Phil Ek, producer of Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses, and does this say it all? They were perfect for the night, the right uplift with gentle pop vocals and catchy melodies or even punchy anthems. And that last one was totally following the Bright Eyes’ vein or my ears were totally frozen!
Ceci Bastida looked surprised to have been invited to the party, at least this is what she said: ‘I can’t believe they let me play here!’ It’s true that she is always the one with the political mind among the lot of artists who had been booked, and people among the crowd were showing a few ‘I can’t breathe’ signs and I had seen others passing around some copies of ‘Revolution Newspaper’… However, I am not sure people were ready for this on NYE, so the protests were kind of quiet but the presence was there nevertheless. Ceci, who has released this year an album called ‘La Edad de la Violencia’ (‘the age of violence’), was hiding her face below a dark LA cap and dancing along her ferocious synth-electro-pop songs, accompanied by horns, drums and Apple computer. Of course, she sings in Spanish but she was speaking for everyone here, and despite the tropical rhythms, it sounded like a revolt.
On another stage, the boy-girl, black-and-white duo Made in Heights, was making a large crowd dance over their very stripped down electro-music. No surprise, half of the band was Sabzi, an alt-hip hop DJ from Seattle, but their number was all about singer Kelsey Bulkin’s vocals and dance moves. She had this ethereal high-pitch childish voice over beats and glitches and other computerized items, something they call ‘mythical filth’ pop. It was playful and upbeat with lots of ooo-ooo-ooos and an electrifying chemistry between the two, not the type to start a riot and certainly a safe choice on NYE. Plus she kind of looked like Julianne Moore…
Just before midnight, I got to see the incendiary Dorothy, not a girl, but a band, actually a band fronted by a girl named Dorothy, who was screaming ‘Nothing good comes after midnight’, so perfect! But despite all this, the band had nothing girlie, they just sounded like Black Sabbath or Led Zepellin fronted by a sort of Shirley Manson wearing Cruella De Vil’s coat, no seriously she was really pretty but so ballsy! It was very cold at that time, but their heavy sound of violent riffs and pounding drums, their bold moves and aggressive howls, put the stage on fire. It was intense and badass, bluesy with metal riffs, and very sexy too, a sort of revival of 70’s-80’s hard rock, a testimony that rock is certainly not dead; it is not a surprise if they were among ‘the 10 new artists you need to know’ in last November’s Rolling Stone issue. And Dorothy was still riding the hard rock high wave, when I ran to see the lightning on the City Hall before the countdown for 2015… Happy New Year!
