Complete with awkward dance moves, synth pop act kicked off its fall tour at Denver’s on Wednesday. The duo of guitarist Ryan Merchant and keyboardist Sebu Simonian — which falls somewhere between Chromeo and Hall & Oates — has amped up up its live show and bounced back from its initial growing pains as an Internet sensation.
Trumpeter Spencer Ludwig cuts through the synths and electric beats to harken the music back to a more traditional sound. The result is music that sticks with you like a good ad jingle — and it’s more fun, too.
Four songs into the set, Simonian was shouting instructions on how to dance during “Capital Cities Shuffle.” Then again during “Center Stage,” the band taught the audience the moves, “Baby step to the right, baby step to the left. NOW SPIN!”
And with only one full album of material to draw from, the band played the extent of its catalog, some twice even. After ending the main set with “Safe and Sound” — its highest charting single — they returned to it during the encore. Following covers of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Madonna’s “Holiday” the band played “Safe and Sound” again, but this time it was a pre-recorded version, freeing up the musicians to dance on stage.
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Evan Semón is a Denver freelance writer and photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. See .
