Playing in the heart of Hollywood at the same time than the Oscars ceremony, when everyone is in front of TV or running toward the Kodak Theater trying to get a glimpse of George Clooney’s hair, is a challenge that Veronica Falls was ready to take. The UK indie band did an in-store at Amoeba on Sunday night in front of a quite large crowd, playing 10 songs mostly off their self-titled album,… the Academy Awards are highly overrated anyway.
Their music is a paradox to describe, on one hand frontman-woman Roxanne Clifford and James Hoare, often back-up by drummer Patrick Doyle, were doing these breezy-dreamy boy-girl harmonies that fit uplifting tunes, on the other hand the tone was dark, delivered with a riotous punk energy. All these multi-vocal harmonies, with the female voice floating higher than the others, and this fast strumming could not really hide the latent gloom or the sad riffs, sometimes evoking the unique bright-dark sound of the Velvet Underground.
And when I looked at some of the titles of the songs on the set list, ‘Buried Alive’, ‘Bad Feeling’, ‘Found Love in a Graveyard’, I thought they may well have a sort of theme, a gothic-Halloween one. The songs were in general fast, although they played a few slow ones like ‘Stephen’, but everything sounded light, delivered effortlessly, although mostly driven by a stamping and straightforward drumming which was given this fast pulsing and omnipresent rhythm.
The four of them were not moving much on the small stage, Roxanne Clifford and James Hoare sometimes briefly getting closer to each others, whereas Marion Herbain was looking around her, staying still while delivering her Cramps-like bass lines. They were concentrating on their dreamy Cranberries-esque harmonies, contrasting with their slightly discordant guitars, not stopping much between the songs; there was a sense of urgency in their songs, but may be they were just eager to finally catch up that Award ceremony on TV, after all.
Their set was catchy and sweet at the same time, with some little surprise, like ‘Bad Feeling’ and its spacious opening strumming, its gently-galloping melody and ooooooohhs harmonies almost lost in a spaghetti western.
They announced a new single, ‘My Heart Beats’, but most of their bright-enough tunes had this anxious, mild aggression hidden behind dreamy vocals, like fragile voices going against a nervous breakdown of guitars.
Setlist
Right Side of My Brain
Stephen
Beachy Head
Buried Alive
Bad Feeling
My Heart Beats
Found Love in a Graveyard
Wedding Day
A Teenage Wasteland
Come on Over