The Spires, Early Dolphin, The French Semester at the Echo Curio 3/19/10

By Kathryn Pinto
Photo by Olivia Hemaratanatorn

“I’m at the best show of SXSW and I’m not even in Austin.”

Most of Los Angeles was at South by Southwest a week ago Friday, but a few of us were holding down the fort at the usual spots. There were no schwag bags at the Echo Curio, but if you needed one for your drink you could have a brown paper bag.

The week before I had missed much of the French Semester’s set (pictured here performing at the Echo In January) at Spaceland opening for Explode Into Colors and Quasi, who were both incredible. So I arrived early at the Echo Curio to see them play with the much-lauded Spires who I hadn’t yet seen live. I even turned down an invitation to a hot tub party (sans time machine) to go--reasoning that any decent hot tub party could not possibly be in full force until after midnight.

The Spires went on first. You know that photo on the cover of Our Noise, the Merge Records book? That’s how I felt about three seconds into the Spires’ set. Floating, suspended mid-air, in the moment. The Ventura three-piece played poppy sweet-sad songs that mainline straight to your inner sixteen year-old’s heartbreak nerve, melancholy brit-rock with shades of the Velvet Underground.

I was transfixed--they took me somewhere else. The Echo Curio is a weird-ass space, too. It’s a tiny storefront art gallery with a poured concrete floor and plate glass windows in front. Not the greatest sonically speaking, between songs you could hear the snares on the drum vibrating from the ambient noise. The space is so small that the bands weren’t even playing with monitors. If you see many shows at small venues like this one, you learn to forgive a lot. But occasionally a band like the Spires will break through these limitations, rise up and thrill you.

Next up was Early Dolphin, a good band I knew nothing about, described variously as neo-psychedelic and reminiscent of mid-sixties folk rock. It was the three piece’s record release show. Early Dolphin played the Curio as if it were a much larger space, as if to say, “don’t let these walls get in your way, we’re playing a huge room tonight.” Front man Clay Guccione, shredding on guitar, strutted like a peacock all over the room, performing minor acrobatics, climbing up on the drum kit and putting on quite the show.

The French Semester continued in this vein, musically, of looking forward while glancing alternately backward to influences of jangly California pop and the Velvet Underground. Recently, the French Semester has been an iron man band of the Silver Lake/Echo Park circuit. This was the fourth or fifth time I had seen them play, beginning with their January residency at the Echo. Regrouping the live show after lineup changes last year and the release of their new Forces Afield EP, each week of the residency the band grew tighter as a unit and more self-possessed.

At the core of the band is strong songwriting that reminds me a bit of Mermaid Avenue-era Wilco with a dash of the Mamas & the Papas. Vocal harmonies sweeten the arrangements. That Friday night at the Echo Curio the French Semester played songs from their new EP as well as older material with a relaxed confidence built over the course of the residency. By the Echo Curio show the performance was almost effortless and pure fun.

Comments

[drew]

love the spires, LOVE the french semester

[william]

wow the haters walk among us. great bands both...