Death By Audio this past Saturday was another delightfully incestuous Brooklyn/Todd P/Woodsist-ish night. The exception, of course, being That Ghost from sunny California. He played with just a mic and a guitar and only for a few minutes, but I still stand by my assertion that he’s a hell of a good songwriter. Much like his lo-fi comrade Wavves, I suspect his music may be better in the bedroom. Babies is Cassie from Vivian Girls and Kevin from Woods’ side-project. It was lots more of fuzzy, garage lo-fi, and I kind of liked it. When Vivian Girls play, they just sort of seem like a trio of women who aren’t very good at their instruments and got famous just because they’re women. On the one hand, this is entirely unfair because if they were guys, no one would say anything about them not being that great at their instruments. They’d just be another Brooklyn band. On the other hand, if they were a group of men they probably wouldn’t have gotten big. All this annoying posturing was sort of erased from Cassie when she took the stage with Babies. Her vocals sounded great blended with male vocals, and she came off more as a rock-goddess Kim Gordon-like figure than an annoying girl in an annoying girl band. I liked some of their songs, especially the last one about breaking the law. Can’t wait to hear that one recorded.
I enjoyed The Sundelles quite a bit. More solid garage rock. I’m not sure what’s there to separate them from an already over-saturated scene, but they’re all talented musicians with solid songs (there were some really fabulous bass lines in there). Check them out if you like all these other Brooklyn garage-y bands. Lovvers put on another great show. It was interesting to see them at DBA rather than Cake Shop. The Brooklyn venue added a little extra edge to their performance that was quite nice. Still, disappointed that the audience just wouldn’t engage with the lead singer. At one point someone yelled out, “If you guys brought out more punk rockers than bloggers this might actually be fun.” I hung my head in shame, because that was probably true. It’s great that the singer forces people to engage, but there’s not much he can do when the crowd basically refuses to engage back. This escalated into the So So Glos set. The So So Glos are an incredibly fun band. Filled with high energy and positivity, I have a ton of respect for these guys. When I saw them Market Hotel, the crowd was thick and sweaty- jumping around was a no-brainer. DBA, on the other hand, was not packed. Some people still wanted to act like the crowd was as thick as it was at Market Hotel, but unfortunately it was neither the time nor the place. A couple people were dancing, but when approximately two dudes started shoving each other in the front, everyone backed off. The So Sos tried their hardest to encourage people just to dance, but nothing seemed to be going the right way. Eventually someone in the audience got handsy with someone’s girlfriend or something, I couldn’t really tell, and a fight nearly broke out in the middle of a song. It was all very exciting and kind of refreshing, and I walked away still really liking the band, as they soldiered on through their set. No one came off as a jerk, in my opinion, it just all seemed like good rock and roll fun.
That Ghost:
Babies:
The Sundelles:
Lovvers:
So So Glos:
