Portland indie band Y La Bamba can blur a little bit the preconceived idea we may have of indie bands from Portland. Fronted by a tall and thin Mexican woman, Luz Elena Mendoza, who has a taste for tattoos (she looks like she is fronting a punk band) and a strikingly beautiful voice, the band was playing at Make Music Pasadena on Saturday afternoon. Their set was just harmonies galore with interesting south-of-the-border percussion and even an accordion.
It was a quiet lo-fi, almost intimate affair, with a delicate and soft drumming, a sweet acoustic guitar, some dance-y rhythms and often three-voice-male-female harmonies. They started with a minimalist instrumentation, and then, little by little brought more people and more instruments into play.
So when they said where they were from, it was a sort of surprise after hearing all these sounds coming from a much sunnier culture than rainy Portland, but this clashing-weathers sounds works pretty well, as the melancholy is there, mixed with the Latino bouncy rhythms, soft percussion and hushed vocals, and it would not be the first band to be multi-influenced. May be it was the presence of the accordion, which seemed to be used in a more Eastern-Europe than Mexican way, may be it was other subtle elements, but they reminded me a less-operatic-folk version of Devotchka at times, and when I googled both names I found out that had effectively opened for the Denver-based band,… not too surprising!
There was a rare and pure emotion in their songs, especially because of Mendoza’s voice but each of them (guitarist David Kyle, bassist Ben Meyercord, drummer Mike Kitson, and accordion player Eric Schrepel) had this delicate touch and subtle taste for harmonies. The fluidity of their songs, the sophistication of their arrangements was soothing and moving,… then, their last song became just a little bit more animated, like a gypsy-Latino Cumbia, which was making their moniker totally meaningful.