The world moves so fast these days, every new technology pushing people to save time by being more efficient, and more concise. So, in the interest of the zeitgeist, I've confined each band's sound to a single-word description before offering up a deeper and more thoughtful analysis.
King of Spain – Promising
Millionyoung – Misleading
Twin Sister – Enigmatic
Memoryhouse – Captivating
King of Spain is a local experimental indietronica group consisting of Matt Slate and Daniel Wainwright. The twosome's melancholic and reverb-drenched sound might get dismissed by some as uninteresting, but despite a few sonic miscues, their music was innovative and fresh and still showed intriguing promise. This was my first time seeing the duo, but I'll definitely be catching them again.
Millionyoung (aka Mike Diaz) was the artist who drew me to the show in the first place. I wrote a feature story on him for this week's issue, and I was excited to hear how his music would play out live. Not so good, in fact. His vocals were off-key and the discordant instrumentation distracted from what I'd come to associate with his studio work. The mood of the music on his releases is straight-up Chillville, U.S.A. Each downtempo song slips into your bloodstream like a sedative. But, live, it seemed like he was trying to create more of a party vibe, a complete shift from the mood I'd expected.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.
