Dan Deacon

HEALTH

El Rey - January 18, 2008

Live Review and Photograph by Alexis Roberts

The amazing Dan Deacon delivered a show full of surprises at the El Rey - and his openers, Abe Vigoda and Los Angeles locals HEALTH, attracted quite a bit of interest themselves.

HEALTH is a band whose music translates well from your CD player to a live show. They might even be better live. Their loosely structured arty noise rock brought them a good deal of attention. On stage they are energetic and enigmatic, constantly moving and never really letting on to who the “frontman” of the band is; at this point, I’m pretty sure that there isn’t one. Everyone shares the responsibilities. Sometimes one person will play a drum and a bass at the same time, sometimes they will just dance instead and the other three will keep things going. It’s an interesting dynamic and an even more interesting sound.

Before Dan Deacon owned the shit out of everyone in sight, they screened his recently released DVD, Ultimate Reality. It was ultimately strange. It featured trippy clips of the Governator himself from the critically acclaimed movie Junior (yeah, the one where he’s pregnant). The film, accompanied by two drummers drumming was one weird long neon nightmare. It was a reflection of the attire of the kids at the show, mostly neon and, more so, hellish.

Deacon set his equipment up in the middle of the floor rather than on the stage, as he is known to do (can’t wait to see what he does at Coachella) and proceeded to get the crowd dancing within minutes. His set consisted of having us play games, making a human tunnel, having a dance contest and basically just being the catalyst for starting the biggest dance party the El Rey has ever seen. Everyone was dancing, there were no wallflowers. Total uninhibited spastic dancing in all of its glory. Dan Deacon and his neon glowing skull were the life of the party, and let’s not forget that the music part wasn’t too bad either. His DJing skills are only rivaled by few, but his ability to bring the party is rivaled by none. Well done, Dan Deacon, well done.