DAVID BAZEMORE
a&e | POP, ROCK & JAZZ REVIEWS
GOOD OL’ ROCK ’N’ ROLL: On Wednesday, Dawes’ ’70s-indebted folk-rock sound got treated with a touch of jazz and some seriously fancy fretwork.
Brother Harmony Dawes. At the Lobero Theatre, Wednesday, December 11. Reviewed by Charles Donelan
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MERRY FITNESS AND A HAPPY NEW REAR!
t’s always interesting to see a band on the rise, and that’s certainly where Dawes is at the moment. Their 2013 release, Stories Don’t End, is making a mark, especially among the rock ’n’ roll and Hollywood elite. For example, they collaborated with their pals the Killers on a Christmas song, “Christmas in L.A.,” and got one Owen Wilson to act in the video. On Wednesday, December 11, the Los Angeles–based quartet trekked up the to the Lobero, where they played two powerful sets in front of an enthusiastic and mostly younger crowd. After sharing the vocals with former bandmate and now solo artist Blake Mills, frontman Taylor Goldsmith showed fans what he does best: belt out the kind of rock that most of us thought vanished in the late 1970s. Songs like “From a Window Seat,” “Just My Luck,” and “Fire Away,” from their 2011 release Nothing Is Wrong, all sounded tremendous in the warm confines of the newly refurbished Lobero, with Griffin Goldsmith not only keeping the beat but also adding some brotherly harmonies from behind the drums, à la Levon Helm. What keeps these straight-ahead rockers from sounding like throwbacks or copycats are the sophisticated, jazz-like touches they bring to the mix. A big anthemic song like “A Little Bit of Everything” gets punched up with some artsy but not-too-self-indulgent guitar madness, and that walloping sing-along chorus sounds that much better for it. It’s as though the Eagles were somehow down with Sonic Youth, and on this early winter night in Santa Barbara, people were digging it.
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The Growlers. At SOhO Restaurant & Music Club, Saturday, December 14. Reviewed by Jake Blair
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Winner
who. what. now. [independent.com]
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THE INDEPENDENT
december 19, 2013
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y the time The Growlers’ show at SOhO erupted into a mass of confrontations and forceful ejections, such a combustion felt inevitable. The audience clearly threw themselves fully into the Costa Mesa group’s brand of throwback, substance-fueled grooves. Swaths of twenty-somethings decked out in their parents’ clothes spilled over onto SOhO’s stage, where they put their groovy dance moves to work. This isn’t to say that the vibes weren’t chill, though. The mob of bearded, GoPro-toting Growlers fans were nothing if not positive, happy to shell out a few bucks for a pin or a cassette or a T-shirt emblazoned with a cute, albeit overt, drug reference. The Growlers played a number of new songs, too, which felt distinct from the rest of the band’s existing catalogue, showing that as musicians, they have made marked and impressive musical progress of late. But, sadly, the music wasn’t really the star of the show on Saturday night. It was the fights, the patrons screaming at club employees outside of the venue, and frontman Brooks Neilsen’s insistence that audience members not “crush the little girls up front.” It’s hard to imagine the show going differently, considering the band’s seemingly overwrought desire to aestheticize themselves as a druggie gang of surfers, resembling some shady character group introduced in a very special episode of The Wonder Years. Despite their best efforts to be charming and different, very drunk and very high people are still very drunk and very high (even in vintage Coca-Cola tees). And if you put too many of them in one place, it usually doesn’t end well.