Wild Wing, Vision A The Echo, Monday December 21st 2015

Alyson Camus|December 23, 2015

Wild Wing

This is the time of the year when shows slow down, Christmas break is upon us, but there are still a few good gigs around town. The young band Vision has a free residency at the Echo in December, and I caught them last Monday night.

Before Vision, Wild Wing gave us quite a set, their performance contained enough energy and craziness to wake up any sleepy-rainy Monday night, and I became an instant fan… The quartet was wild, loud and totally original with a great taste for a banjo-free hillbilly country western style, coated with large layers of punk energy. ‘Every show is our last show, so catch us while we’re hot!’ they have written on their website, and in case you would believe it is the case, I have covered their last show. There are so many garage bands in LA, that I hadn’t had the chance to see Wild Wing in action yet, despite them being one of the hardest working bands in LA, but I have now witnessed their westernized punk tunes, their fast horse-rides that they called songs. There’s some Johnny-Cash-whipped-rhythms deep down inside their unrestrained tunes, even if they may have attended the same school than the Black Lips. They were as funny as inventive, injecting a few bluesy assaults into their songs of their unreleased album, which exists on Bandcamp. The live version of Wild Wing is nevertheless a notch above these streaming tracks, more devilish with a burning desire to provide the soundtrack for an upcoming Quentin Tarantino movie.

Vision was a very different experience and an intense one, so intense they totally exhausted their drummer, and had to shorten their set a bit. The quartet has a wild and aggressive power with krautrock-y-shoegazing soundscapes and big echoes of the Jesus and Mary Chain. And if this reference obviously seemed to pop up in my mind at the first tune, their aggressiveness also reminded me the early days of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s dark psychedelia. Their thick sound was fast wrapping the place into an aggressive dance with distortion, a touch of violence and danger, amplified by some bumping-into-each-other moves. And did I mention they look great? Plus, I had a sort of Gallagher vision when I heard Christopher Valer’s unapologetic (and honestly a bit pissed-off) vocals… and this is because of all these references that Vision has been called East LA’s answer to Britpop, although they have admitted to be influenced by the aggressiveness and heaviness of Nirvana. They have opened for the omnipresent Ty Segall and have already participated into SXSW parties, as they has just released a self titled EP on, where else?… Burger Records. Watch out Liam and Noel…