It was Stone Darling’s night at the Satellite, as the band has a Monday residency during August, and the ladies wanted to have fun.
They first played a few of their songs habited by these sunny-dreamy harmonies with that 60s-feeling-in-the mind, doubled by the busy-fuzzy guitar of Elvis, the only guy in this girl-band. With pretty Paige Stark as a front woman on guitar sharing the vocal part with Lindsay Dawn's great voice, helped by Mikki Itzigsohn on bass and Liv Marsico on drums, they looked like the most charming secret of the Silver Lake music scene,
They started the show with ‘I stopped missing you today’, a song recently posted on their bandcamp page, and also did their now famous cover of Funkadelic’s ‘Can You Get to That’ with warm and playful harmonies, the sort of songs you wish you could hear on a bright afternoon cruising the streets.
Their lazy-surfing melodies may remind you other recent hyped girlie band – I don’t know, Best Coast may come to mind – but these Stone Darling’s girls are much more meticulous with their hooks, everything is more polished, more delicate, there is a certain research of majesty and purity in their haunting vocal arrangements, and their tender songs are definitively much more on the shoegazing side than Bethany Cosentino’s; more gospel-bound than punk-bound, although the longing that transpire from them may be the same.
But I said they wanted to have fun, and they did, inviting many friends on stage for their last songs, one friend sitting behind the keyboard left there by the previous band, the other one, Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins, helping on guitar and vocals, and covering the Louvin Brothers (I think). And for the grand finale, the whole Whispering Pines cast came back on stage, and even a few others (didn't I recognized the guy from The Street and Babe Shadow band?) making the Satellite stage looking quite crowded.
Stone Darling will play the Satellite every Monday in August and they recently got a full EP release funded on Kickstarter, so we should expect to hear much more from them very soon.