All-Ages shows always inspire equal parts discomfort and inspiration in me.
For anyone over the age of 30 (or, God forbid, over the age of 40 and graying at the temples to boot), being surrounded at a music venue by youngsters years away from their first legal beer can’t help but make you feel like an alien, surrounded by a lot of curious (and frequently suspicious) onlookers.
Then again, seeing said kids throwing themselves into an evening of rip-roaring garage-rock energy has a way of warming one’s heart. Such was the case with Burger Records‘ Burgerama Caravan of Stars tour, which buzzed into Neumos the week before last.
A stacked bill of no less than seven bands, all currently or formerly flying the Burger flag, played. Each act drew from retro elements — neo-psychedelia, garage rock, snotty punk, twangy surf — then spit those influences out with the ragged, anti-hipster energy that only youth can bestow.
I missed openers Colleen Green and The Memories (a guy’s gotta eat, y’know), making it in just in time to see Seattle quartet La Luz blast off. Their swaggering, drop-dead cool mix of girl-group harmonizing and stinging surf guitars blew me away during their August 2013 Doe Bay Fest set, and big surprise, they once again ruled. In just the last two months they’ve grown in confidence, with guitarist/lead singer Shana Cleveland firing off Duane-Eddy-worthy licks with playful toughness.
Such composure knew no place in the world of together PANGEA, a California band who bashed out a set so energetic it bordered on spastic. Frontman/guitarist/songwriter William Keegan emerged muttering and yelping from an obsessive place somewhere between scraping lo-fi garage rock and restlessly twitchy punk, frequently splitting the air with screams that put his sanity into question. Bassist Danny Bengston, guitarist Cory Hanson, and drummer Erik Jiminez pushed Keegan’s funny and hooky songs along with ferocious abandon. If you’re looking for an exhilarating schoolyard brawl between The Black Lips, The Ramones, and Violent Femmes, look no further.
I’m not sure what to make of Gap Dream, but whatever they were, they sounded good. The three-piece sported a combination of sounds that shouldn’t have worked together, but did. Almost prog-rock keyboards, spacy guitars, primitive pop melodies, and laptop-generated percussion swirled together to create a style that was alternately rinky-dink, epic, and strangely catchy as all get out.
Orange County combo Cosmonauts followed up with a throbbing, guitar-driven drone that came from a darker corner, with a heavy, pile-driving backbeat and songs that spattered like the Jesus and Mary Chain on one doozy of an acid trip. Costa Mesa band The Growlers, meantime, finished out the night with a set of surf-tinged tunes that loped along with a stoner’s easygoing affability. Singer Brooks Nielsen made a funny, self-deprecating frontman (“We totally butchered that song, and you didn’t even notice,” he said with bemused amusement after the band kicked through their opening number), and while his band didn’t quite launch me into the stratosphere, their ambling and deceptively upbeat tunes sent the all-ages crowd into a bouncing, dancing frenzy. Ah, youth.
