It’s scary to think about the hypothetical love child of Robert Smith and Connor Oberst – all that mascara, emo jewelry and tangled hair. Then you listen to the Shout Out Louds, and suddenly the curious juxtaposition makes sense.
At times lead singer Adam is brooding and searching, his fingers tearing at his scalp for an answer. Elsewhere he’s a thoughtful, storytelling melody-man rocking away from “Fascination Street” but still in touch with “Catch” and “Like Cockatoos.”
At Tuesday’s all-ages Climax Lounge show, he moved between those personalities, making for the tightest, best-sounding show I’ve seen at a club notorious for its wayward sound.
The Shout Out Louds were adorable and admirable in their passion for the live music experience. The Climax was a smaller venue than the band, and the night’s headliner, The Dears, are accustomed to on this tour, but it worked. Each time Adam, fellow guitarist Carl and bassist Ted rocked out, they would hunch over in a semi-circle and knock a hypnotic riff back and forth in unison. Eric’s drums were tight; the finishing touch was Bebban, the group’s only female member, who accented the instrumentation with sweet keyboards and harmony.
– Ricardo Baca
The Mars Volta
Tuesday at the Fillmore saw a frenetic art rock band out of Los Angeles (by way of El Paso) who craft jazz-metal-psychedelia that makes music snobs salivate.
A stage-to-rafters black widow curtain illustration bathed in fuchsia light faced the floor. Then, as the opening strains of “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” soundtrack filled the room, “la areña” sailed to the floor amid wailing horns, rumbling percussions, madcap keyboards, guitar and visceral vocals engineered by childhood friends Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala.
At first brush, their influences seem open-book: Frank Zappa, Santana, Black Sabbath, Miles Davis. But the elevation of those ideas is far from simplistic. It takes a cultivated ear to decipher where one “song” stops and the next begins.
Up until Bixler “broke character” to scold the audience for tossing water onto the stage, a move that quickly soured the show’s vibe, this crowd followed compliantly as the band meandered between tracks from “De-Loused in the Comatorium,” an album inspired by a friend’s suicide, and the operatic CD “Frances the Mute,” based on a stranger’s diary.
– Elana Ashanti Jefferson
Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age rock-ologist Josh Homme swaggers and cusses like a Sunset Strip caricature. Homme has never embraced the “stoner rock” moniker attached to his dark and sexy vision but the strobe light explosion and eerie forest set during the band’s May 25 Paramount gig underscored how this group uses music and imagery to spin fairytale psychedelia.
The Eagles of Death Metal, a campy vanity project Homme put together with Palm Desert pal Jesse Hughes, unleashed sassy, cowbell bar-rock during the opening. Although Homme generally assumes drumming duties, there was something fishy about this band’s guitar player sporting a freaky old-man mask. “Take it off!” a fan bellowed, suspecting Homme was the mystery player.
The 6-foot-5 rock star strutted on later in painted-on black as QOTSA performed a show heavy with tracks from this year’s “Lullabies to Paralyze.” Hit song “No One Knows” was a crowd-pleaser but newer tracks such as “Tangled Up in Plaid,” “Little Sister” and “Burn the Witch” truly captured this band’s artful aesthetic.
– Elana Ashanti Jefferson
