Saint Motel was playing at the Hammer Museum Thursday night in the ‘Also I like to Rock’ series sponsored by KCRW, a LA radio which has been playing their song ‘Butch’ for about a month now.
Kitten, a five piece teen band was opening the show, and they took the audience by surprise with their youth and raw power. I still have a hard time to believe that Chloe Chaidez, the female lead singer and songwriter of the band, is only 15! She was sure the center of attraction during their performance, frenetically moving her body, crawling on the stage floor, jumping around and spitting a mouthful of water over the crowd like a true punk star. At times, her voice reminded me a little Corin Tucker’s (Sleater-Kinney), and while we are served every day with talentless and insipid teens in the like of Justin Bieber, I can only applause this terrific combination of such young age and sonic maturity! I found however that her outbursts of raw energy were at times a little forced and too well rehearsed.
Saint Motel took the stage shortly after Kitten’s impressive performance. It was my first experience with the band and when reading articles about them beforehand, I noticed the adjectives ‘cinematic’ and ‘explosive’ were repetitively used to describe their live performance
I suppose even these two adjectives failed at describing the effusion of energy these four guys spend to put a ferociously spectacular live show on stage. With two guitars, one bass and drums they prove they can rock with a pleasantly playful and humorous side, which automatically puts a smile on your face, … who has said rock ‘n’ roll should be taken seriously?
A/J Jackson (vocals, guitar), Aaron Sharp (lead guitar), Greg Erwin (drums) and Dak (bass) met in film school and have obviously put a lot of effort into the live experience that a music show can possibly be by projecting interesting and surprising visuals behind the stage. They even made a video piano which, rather than accessing notes, accesses videos clips that can be blended together.
They have said that they approach songs in a visual and cinematographic sense, being heavily influenced by the films they have studied.
Their sound is a little hard to describe, ‘It’s like Cali Glam’ Iman who interviewed the band in November 2009, told me, but many names have been thrown out there to describe their sound: Bowie, T-Rex, Supertramp, or ‘Supertramp produced by Eno circa Roxy music’s For Your Pleasure’ as Iman said. This seems a little complex to imagine for me, and this could all depend on the song you are listening to! I guess I could even hear some Blondie in the song ‘Dear Dictator’.
Their songs are full of many outbursts of joyful guitar riffs that jump unexpectedly at your face, as well as surprising twists, which build catchy melodies using an ascending climax and distinctive lyrics.
Their music is like a colorful scenery of sounds which often build up to explode in a rainbow of colors (I suppose I was very influenced by the visuals projected behind the stage). In their video clips, beside abstract kaleidoscopes of colors and shapes, you could see glimpses of famous artists, Picasso, Dali, Pollock, and I don’t know if they were supposed to represent respectively the creativity, the craziness and humor, and the sonic patchwork I could find in their music, but I took it like that.
Watching the Today show yesterday morning while Maroon 5 was performing ‘This Love’ live, I was thinking how badly unimaginative this song sounds. I know it’s only my opinion because the song was well received by the critics and was a huge commercial success, but I just find the chorus trite and cheap.
Both bands are from LA, but if Maroon 5 has followed a road paved of clichés playing a music that does nothing for me, Saint Motel plays therapeutic harmonies that bloom at their best during invigorating live shows.