As I think back to this show, I keep finding myself in awe of just how good it was because it is so rare to go to a show where the opening band is as good as the headliner.
To top it off, the small yet intimate DC9 venue offered the option for total engagement with the bands. Lots of witty crowd banter ensued. Youth Lagoon simply melted all hearts in the room, just in time for Gardens and Villa to lift each heart as if they were paper butterflies rising like notes from a flute.
Santa Barbara’s Gardens and Villa are as unassuming live as the down-to-earth indie that makes them so loveable. Adam Rasmussen on keys alternates to the flute on one song and claps along to the impossibly catchy “Thorncastles” to the lyrics “flashlights make faces like witches/ oooh magic.”
I was not really sure what to expect from Secretly Canadian’s Gardens and Villa, especially not a spacey psychedelic dance party. There is something for everyone with this band as they play colorful and accessible indie-pop with the catchy psychedelic overtones for which MGMT struggle on Congratulations.
As they launch into “Black Hills,” they channel the Talking Heads and the indie sensibilities of Spoon. Rasmussen is a wizard on keys, also shifting to drum machine for “Orange Blossom.” This is when the set slows down a bit and gets completely amazing as bassist Shane McKillop whips out a flute and starts playing it live, just as the Talking Heads would do. This is no cheesy flute solo, but a folky inclusion that works on a level that incites chills from this girl, right here.
It’s a bit unfair for this review that I was having so much fun dancing and taking pictures that I didn’t write many notes, but one thing that remains crystallized in my memory is the unique merch at the Gardens and Villa table, including an apron hand-screened by the drummer’s girlfriend. That’s freaking adorable. Not only that, I could have walked away with my very own Gardens and Villa flute, which included a download of the “sockhop slowjam” “Hailey.”
I’m not even joking when I say I want to be best friends with Trevor Powers of Youth Lagoon. Sure, he’s 22, like two years older than my sister who’s in college, but we have so much in common, and I’m pretty sure he’s written a song about every problem I’ve had in every year of the extra 10 I’ve got on him. UGH, that makes me feel old.
Anyway, he breaks into his first self-conscience song, and I’m all swoon city. Each heart-on-his-sleeve song is so genuine, with the innocence of a child, but never childish. He might have been tapped on the back by the same magical faery that gives Daniel Johnston a similar approach to his songs, tapping into the deep recesses of emotion, mining for the purest gold within his soul.
He breaks up with his set with a toast to his friends, Gardens and Villa, “May you be blessed and live forever.” His dimples sparkle like diamonds, his double keyboards give a little tremble in anticipation of the next song.
“Daydream” sounds like it’s sampling Close Encounters of the Third Kind with an indie pop intro that of Montreal might want to sample. During “Posters,” I drift off into visions of Powers locked in a bedroom full of pot smoke, the TV in the background as he reminisces about recent experiences.
File both Gardens and Villa and Youth Lagoon under: music to make art to, music to make love to, music to make you happy.
Gardens and Villa:
Youth Lagoon:
