I saw The Lovely Bad Things a few weeks ago, opening for Fidlar and several other bands at the Echo and I hadn’t taken the time to write about them, what a shame! Yes, what a shame since I liked their all-punked-up surf music, and their awesome energy on stage.
The OC quartet played an in-store at Origami Vinyl on Saturday night and did totally repeat their dynamic performance, up in the store loft, which doesn't allow any safe stage diving, but the spirit was there, as their music is definitively mosh-pit-fun-crowd-surfing material. The store was quite busy, and I saw a person in the audience wearing a totally fitting Fidlar t-shirt, while several other persons had Burger Records buttons, the label of The Lovely Bad Things.
Beside the formidable energy each member of the band showed on stage, Lauren Curtius, Brayden Ward, Tim Hatch, and Camron Ward kept switching instruments and places during the performance – I saw a lot of bands doing this lately! – and they were doing this so naturally, without thinking about it for a second, that it was just another thing that kept their performance even more interesting. The four of them were singing separately, or together, vocal harmonies all over the place with no frontman/woman in sight, and all their songs seemed to proceed in a fun and happy emergency.
The music was indeed very uplifting, cheerful and rooted in a sort of old-school punk rock mixed with many other genres varying from one song to another: bright-beachy-surfy with shouted aggressive vocals, or darker, almost Pixies-esque with girl-boy harmonies,… more reverb there, more bouncy-foot-tapping rhythms here, and there was more than one explosive moment during their set, whereas the hooks were certainly not missing.
‘You seem so far away’ said to us a member of the band while looking down from the loft before shredding along one of their loud surf-y jams off their 2010 full length entitled ‘Shark Week’, but also off their new record, ‘New Ghost/Old Waves’ just released last year.
I don’t know if it was the impetuousness of their youth but they all seemed to be acting like wild and unleashed animals, layering screamed male vocals over sweet female harmonies, and launching a speed-up sonic rocket at each guitar riff!