Poolside was the first band I saw at the block party during Filter Magazine's Culture Collide Festival on Sunday afternoon, and they were not even on the bill but were replacing the Brazilian band Blonde do Role, who cancelled due to illness. I remember seeing these two guys opening for some band I saw a couple months ago, but this time they were more than two guys and the crowd was responding with much more enthusiasm to their lazy summer jams.
And may be this is what is needed with Poolside: time, time to let their music slowly infuse brains and bodies. First of all, they completely embraced their moniker, they made music that stagnated like pool water warming up under the sun, it was boiling repeatedly and wasn't going very far, but it was warm and fuzzy.
They mixed funky and bouncy rhythms with high-pitch falsetto vocals and put up a real summer party at the end of this sunny fall afternoon, making people in the crowd dance, not too hard, it was rather a gentle and languid dance, but you can't do too much when it's hot.
At first, they looked a little bit like a band that would entertain the crowds at some exotic vacation spot, but surprised everyone by their combination of repetitive funky-disco melodies, heavy on bass with some tropical rhythms and electronic beats thrown here and there. The results were so groovy and relaxing, they ended up being total crowd pleasers, as people were following with happy dance moves. The whole thing had a DJ-style feeling, but, by far, my favorite part of their set was their cover of Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’, treated like a languishing house-disco hit with vibrating bass and melancholic falsetto,.. Funny how a great classic can be revisited this way! And this didn’t escape LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, who, according to what I read, has spun the song a few times during his recent summer DJ sets.
Is summer over already? On Sunday afternoon, as the sun was going down, Poolside was running after summer, they would not even really stop between their songs, as if they didn't want the shinny beats to slow down, they were extending their never ending summer pool cocktail party and I guess most people were getting ready to put some sunscreen on and lay down on the concrete, when their set abruptly stopped. Today, the weather was far less sunny, may be summer is really over after all.