How many bands can say they are from California and Oslo, Norway? Not too many, but that’s nevertheless the case for Waters, the new project of Van Pierszalowski (ex-Port O’Brien), who were opening for Vetiver on Wednesday night at the Troubadour.
The young band played some power-pop aggressive rocking numbers, fueled by a real muscular energy, the guitarists constantly going back and forth toward their mics on stage, their backs bent on the instruments in some Neil Young-ish moves, seemingly giving all they could in a few minutes of guitar distortion and assaulting vocals.
The sound was big, loud, sweaty and intense, the shouting vocals were raw and often soaring, may be a little bit too predictably, but with a visible sincerity, during these moody but catchy melodies. With their lumberjack shirts, the young men looked like healthy, big-outdoor guys – which is actually the case, as their bio says frontman Van Pierszalowski spent some time in Norway, swam in the Norwegian fjords, enjoyed the weather and the experience of seasons changing – transforming their anger into these outbursts of emotion, but sometimes harmonizing into explosive choruses. Even during a quieter acoustic song, the vocals were powerful, and Van Pierszalowski had a way to inflate his chest when he was singing as if he was about to clear everything out of his lungs.
‘We have a very hard name to google’ Pierszalowski said, ‘We are probably at page 1000!’. He has a point, what’s the matter with all these bands and their unsophisticated moniker like Girls or Waters? Don’t they want to actually be found on the web?
Anyway Waters’ debut album ‘Out in the Light’ will come out on September 20th via tbd Records, and this is the title track: