Saadi is a rhythm based rock band with a chick bass player and layered rhythms that interlock between a Western and Middle Eastern flavored . “Angel Don’t Move” is good and “Birds” has the leader advising the audience they can dance if they wanna.
They should dance, while this is about a meeting of cultures somewhere in the back of your mind, it is also about moving your hips.
Everything derives from the bass and the bass is heavy and addictive, if Saadi appears unsure on stage the uncertainty does not effect the music which seems to draw sustenance through movement.
The last song “In A Big City” has a tabla player joining the band and the audience is asking for more. “That’s all the songs we know” Saadi laugh.
Before Jenny Wilson I found myself talking to a young lady. Her two man band, Shadowbox, will be playing after Jenny Wilson.
She calls them an electronic rock band with industrial beats and I think, yeah, right, this pleasant woman… Holy Moley. Alone on stage, she has all lights turned off with only strobes on either side, there is a pc to her left and she moves from one to another with sureness and smoothness belied by the jerkiness of her dancing. Lana Mir should take a look just for the way she manages to take hold of the stage and not allow the staticness of the pc to make her static.
It is a fearless, admirable performance (what I caught of it -I left before the guitarist joined her) and if it is rock , it is more dance: the rhythms and where it is at and the point. The bass thunders as she sings -but not artily, very rockily center stage. The audience looks mesmerized though again they should be dancing. Lights flash and she moves her arms from her elbows and her knees.
A startling performance. But both of these bands are on my check this out later list. Both have fb and that would be Saadi and Shadowbox.
One more thing. I don’t know who books Pianos but whoever it is isn’t being paid nearly enough. To find a band on each side so perfectly for Jenny Lewis is a great achievement. $8 for the night by the way.
OK, I will try my best to write Jenny Wilson during lunch.