"Let's Independent!" May, 2008

Tuesday night was "Let's Independent!" night at Boardners and once again Joe of Radio Free Silver Lake offered a stellar lineup of rising bands.. The evening had more of a post punk feel than usual beginning with openers The Karabel Nightlife. They play a kind of angular rock with elements of folk and punk, flavored by leader Jesse Davis' nice twisty melodies that, once I learned that his grandfather was film composer Leonard Rosenman, made perfect sense to me. His score for 1955's "East of Eden" is full of lovely melodies with a real heartrending edge whereas his score for the brilliant 1976 TV movie "Sybil" is dissonant, angular and scary. Both these elements are evident in Davis' compositions and it makes for a nice interesting sound. The Soft Hands, up from Long Beach, played a more straightforward set which was nicely focused and had the audience bobbing their heads. They seemed to have the biggest crowd of the evening and as The Savages went on, as other blogs have reported, the crowd thinned considerably. Apparently, I was fortunate because other writers have complained about the loud gabbing going on during their set, but I, luckily, slid over to one of the unoccupied couches on the side and, with a direct view of the band, I was blithely unaware of any commotion and got to enjoy the band's psych-prog-post punk amalgam of sound with fabulous atmospherics from just some fog and a strobe light . Fun night of music with friends.

Wednesday night was The Dresden Dolls, Lavender Diamond and Smoosh and I hope to post on that tomorrow.

whrabbit