On The List :: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. @ Music Hall of Williamsburg [4.27.13]

This review runs first on Bowery's House List blog.

The world of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. now operates on one law of nature and physics: If some is good, more is better. This wasn’t always the case for Dan Zott and Josh Epstein. Early on, they made their name wearing NASCAR racing suits and trafficking in Pet Sounds–era two-part harmonies. The first song on their debut EP, “Nothing but Our Love,” was sort of a simple offer compared to the bombast that’s begun creeping into their more recent work. Thus begins something of a second life with a new EP, the two-weeks-old Patterns: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. in an active and obvious evolution. Bubbles, cloth lanterns, enormous inflatable balls and human beings—the band sent spheres of all kinds into revolution if not outright orbit on Friday night at a very sold-out and frenetic Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. opened with a brief teaser of the “na-na-na” chorus of first-LP jam “An Ugly Person on a Movie Screen” before making the transition to open with the recent “Hiding,” an enormous slice of buzzing synth pop. With Zott rocking a side ponytail in his curly brown hair, and both members wearing matching paisley suits, the sounds owed themselves to the crossover of “We Are Young,” by fun., but the visual aesthetics were all LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem.” This was as exciting to the Warner Music contingent in the balcony as it was to the combustible fans on the floor. Dale Earnhardt. Jr. Jr. turned to play “Simple Girl,” a sweet little song from their first LP, It’s a Corporate World, before running through “Vocal Chords” and some new material, noting, “You’ll know this one,” prior to playing “Morning Thought.”

But, unquestionably, the moment of the evening occurred when the enormous inflatable white sphere that stood like an unpigmented sun above the stage was lit with projected animation, making a gigantic Lego-man face that sang along with the music. The face became 8-bit animation to go with the lyrics for “Skeletons,” a loop of the life cycle of a tiny pixelated man and woman. The song, about the twin impulses of forgetting and remembering the past, rang perfectly for the band on the cusp of something of a big next movement, the next turn, the lives of imagined selves and illuminated orbs set against the “skeletons buried in the backyard.”

Sivu :: "Bodies"

The angular acoustic tweaks of Sivu return with latest effort "Bodies". A tiny guitar loop sets itself against synthesizer sonics and the obvious Alt-J comparisons until something of a cloud-clearing chorus that makes ample reference to the great Biblical flood of Noah. At once tense, restrained and pretty, "Bodies" floats away on a weightless melody - and this says nothing of the charming pronunciation of "bodies", the near addition of the letter "t". It ends up being a weird love song set against the backdrop of the apocalypse, Sivu singing, "I watch the animals walking two by two/well, who do you think is going to walk with you?". Dark, to be sure, and perfect for the widescreen pop of an increasingly brilliant crossover artist.

Bora York :: "Close Your Eyes"

All silky sonics and glossy melody, Bora York, a dream-pop outfit from Minneapolis maneuver their slow-drive anthem, "Close Your Eyes" toward some warmer destination. Lightweight keyboards, frictionless guitars and overlapping boy-girl vocals insulate the verses and chorus in sweeping layers of sound and melody, something vaguely tropical. While the lyrics court some darkness, their content is more insouciant than lethal. The image of a divine dawn - "we'll watch God paint the sky" - creeps into the last line of the bridge, an easily forgettable misstep as the refrain washes over the listener again and again like a relentless and entirely welcome rising tide.

Prides :: "Out Of The Blue"

Glasgow three-piece Prides announce their arrival with a nasal and modulating synthesizer loop. Sitting just short of the five-note hook for MGMT's "Kids" in terms of pure catchiness, "Out Of The Blue" leverages this synth line against slamming percussion loops and a glittering backdrop of digitized sounds, an instantly memorable debut single. Sounding a bit like We Were Promised Jetpacks playing an Erasure cover, the winsome moral victories of Scottish music blend easily with the adolescent fatalism of synthesizer pop. Much of the charm of "Out Of The Blue" lies in the repeated lyrical motif of the word, "no", a head-shaking, visceral and emotive response. An instant-repeat candidate, the kind of band that will seize the ears of talent buyers and A&Rs alike, "Out Of The Blue", despite all these assorted "no's", only waits for the larger affirmation that surely awaits in the coming months.

Wet :: "U Da Best"

Ignoring the grammar and style of the title, Brooklyn three-piece Wet build a small, stuttering slice of delicious pop on "U Da Best". The band channels some of the intensely modern James Blake-style sonics on the song's intro: heavily layer vocals, vocodered in places, a measured sparseness, the creeping sadness that hangs at the edges of happy moments in lyrics like, "All I know is/when you hold me/I still feel lonely". Not quite a break up song, it's about being happy and sad together. The chorus almost literally breathes its own tonal modulation, rising and falling on the back of Kelly Zutrau's charming vocal. Concerning only highs and lows, the desire to leave is set perilously against the need to stay, Zutrau crushing on lines like, "You hardly know me", then shifting gears into the title lyric, "Baby, you're the best", before closing with, "Maybe we should quit while we're ahead." The deeply modern counterfactual of the roads unchosen, the paralyzing world of choice, a multiplicity of unknown joys and miseries, the places we know the best becoming the places we most need to evacuate.

Challenger :: "Life In The Paint [Jesu remix]"

Challenger, creator of one of our favorite records of 2012, The World Is Too Much For Me, is hard at work on a yet untitled second LP. Having previewed the possible first single, sounding like a cross of Youth Lagoon's keyboard lushness and the throwback synths of the Reading Rainbow theme song, the second record stands to be as immense as the first. While awaiting new material, the band releases the Jesu remix of stand-out "Life In The Paint" with its glittering synths and spoken word sample, "Break up your fucking heart." Jesu removes the sample, turning up the bass and the moral victories on the buzzing re-imagining, isolating the guitar line in new, frigid relief. Like so much of the Challenger catalog, this aims somewhere back in our unremembered past, as singer John Ross invokes a seasonal reprise, "it's fall/it's fall again," before finally concluding, "this is fall/fall is here", the dying embers of a lost and complete world.

Young Hunting :: "Baby's First Steps"

LA's Young Hunting, with the forthcoming debut record, Hazel, recently offered a preview in the form of stand-out, "Baby's First Steps". A dark, folk-rock track, "Baby's First Steps" roots itself in a slow-drive chorus before growing increasingly metastatic and dangerous on a guitar-driven closing movement. The initial progression represents a sort of funeral-pop, a measured and troubled guitar line full of elegy and lyrics like, "you look up at the window as the water rushes down/you look through your reflection into the darkness that surrounds you." But, if Local Natives made this type of sorrow just light enough to lift, Young Hunting chooses the same methodology, oozing treble on the silky harmonies in the song's chorus. The final offer, the halting title lyric is as dark and pretty as any Thom Yorke melody, twin visions of a Los Angeles caught somewhere between hopelessness and hope.