The Hundred Days, a band from San Francisco, was opening at the Satellite on Saturday night, and despite the early hour they had decided to transform the place in a late-night dance floor with their contagious rhythms. It was definitively hard to stay still during their shaking-floor tunes like the steamy hot ‘Sex U’.
With soaring guitars and an attitude borrowed from the British invasion (I don’t know there was something odd and familiar in the way singer Jon Smith, straight as an i, was holding his guitar with the instrument neck way up) the quartet showed some true rock performance ability. Smith had also some mechanical-David-Byrne-like moves, and was adopting a sort of military march to walk towards Brett Zadlo on bass or Jimmy Chen on guitars and keyboards.
The rhythmic dance grooves that were inhabiting their songs were reminiscent of a lot of bands, and it was difficult to pinpoint exactly the main influence or what other band was in that same sonic world,… Franz Ferdinand? Definitively! This kind of catchy indie-pop that include dance beats in their songs! But not everything was ass-shaking, some of the music (and vocals) had even something of The Cure, whereas the delivery stayed very energetic with a sort of punkish-pose.
They have just released their debut album, ‘Really?’ on August 16, and they said it was the last show of their tour. I blame the tremendous heat outside, and the ultra-freezing air conditioning inside the club for the lack of participation of the crowd at the beginning of their set. However, the bright electro pop beats of ‘Girl at a party’ changed the ambiance into a dynamic toe-tapping dance-floor.