Show 10/52 – Woods, Real Estate, Surf City at R&R Hotel

This is long overdue…we’ve been slackers, well, mostly I’ve been a slacker since I was the only Rockwurst crew member to go to this show. And I have to say, it was blog worthy in the highest degree. But I will keep it short because there are other things to catch up on, like the Wilco show, and my Coachella experience. But like I said, this show was awesome, and needs to be mentioned.

First up with the a New Zealand group Surf City. I had no idea who they were, and that was cool, because they came out with good energy. I see them as part of a new punk scene, and I could be way off on this, but it feels like punk slowed down and more melodic. I don’t have much history with the early punk scene, but I hear a revival these days, but with similar influences of current indie rock. Check out a video of Surf City:

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Next up was Real Estate. I had heard a couple of songs, but not too much. I enjoyed the hell out of these guys. Spacious and intelligent, everything very smooth but deliberate. Nothing very earth shattering, but they were fun and write tight songs. Here is a video:

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Last up was Woods, and all I can say is, wow what a sonic adventure! They were amazing! At first, I was standing towards the back of the venue, and I kept hearing a bunch of sounds that were not coming from the 3 band members I saw, then I saw this flop of hair pop up at one point, so I made my way up towards the stage, and there was a 4th member of the band on his knees playing all kinds of unique instruments. Now I wasn’t close enough to see everything really well, but once I got closer, I was enveloped in a wall of sound that was amazing. It is pretty hard to describe, (see video below) and I don’t think there is a genre to place them in. There were two things that stood out to me. First was the juxtaposition of  sounds. The guy on the floor seemed to play things that at first didn’t really mesh with everything, so you had this mixing of sudo-pop and ambient almost Sigur Ros-esque sounds, and before I got closer to the stage, I was having trouble making it work. But then it clicked with me and I started to see how they drove each other with a back and forth play. The other feeling I got, after I started figuring out what they were doing, was an almost Pink Floyd planned experimentation, a driving force of sonic exploration. They didn’t sound like Floyd at all, but I got that kind of energy from their set.

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Lastly, after Woods finished their set, all three bands came on stage and did a crazy cover of Blind Melon’s No Rain. Everyone changed instruments from what they normally played, and it was really a cluster fuck of sounds, but it was so much fun.