Dirty Projectors

YACHT

White Rainbows

Echoplex - September 14, 2007

Live Review and Photograph by Alexis Roberts

It’s kind of funny that these three bands (well, the first two are actually solo acts) were playing a show together seeing as how they are all so different, yet they do share one unifying quality. They are all weird as hell. White Rainbow is one man playing ambient static with no lights on while sitting down. Not that there is a problem with that, but when he was beginning his set people weren’t sure if there was a problem with the speakers or if he was getting started. It was sort of interesting but not enough to keep everyone captivated. Half of the people in the place were sitting on the stools in the back of the venue chatting and not even taking notice of what was going on.  The thing about White Rainbow is that even though it isn’t bad to listen to, it’s been done better by other artists and this isn’t necessarily the kind of noise that you want to hear live. It’s more of a “listen to on lowest possible volume before falling asleep” type thing.

YACHT changed up the atmosphere quite a bit when he took the stage and began his set with an extemporaneous stand up routine that was only slightly coherent. YACHT (aka Jona Bechtolt) is one man and his laptop, and is a bouncy energetic ball of giggles and smiles and rainbows and everything magical. He’s tall and lanky, kind of reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite. However if you get a chance to see Jonas' moves, you will see that he puts Napoleon to shame. Toward the middle of the set two or three fans invited themselves up on stage to dance with him; this resulted in another fifteen following them up and a huge dance party taking place on stage while Jona hopped the barricade and sang from the audience. This isn’t something you see every day, folks. He requested that everybody sit down with him while he sang, and they did. Just like that.

Dirty Projectors took the stage last around 10:30 and pleased the crowd with their quirky music. The four-piece band from New York drew quite a large crowd and they gave the crowd what they wanted to hear. Their music defies any type of generic sticker that you could slap on it. Fully equipped with a male lead singer and two female vocalists, one of whom also doubles as the staple flautist. Their music has frantic tendencies, awkward time signatures and warbling vocals. Ultimately we could call this experimental but that’s a bit of a vague statement and they aren’t vague sounding in the least. On stage, despite their frenzied tunes, they are mostly a mellow bunch of ladies and gentlemen who are focused upon playing their songs, more so than they are focused on rocking out and acting crazy. The kids in the crowd, however, were focused on dancing and moving and grooving. The set was short by most headlining standards. I think it was a total of 10 or 11 songs and there was no encore. The energy of the night sort of just dissipated into the air immediately after they finished playing and everyone wandered back outside to get their cars from the valet.