Class Actress, Neon Indian & Friends at the Echoplex 6/4/10

LA meet Brooklyn's own Madonna, Class Actress.

In Los Angeles these days, there is an embarrassment of musical sustenance being served up from melodious kitchens across the city–on any given night, the avid seeker of live tunes can choose from a variety of local and imported talent. Calling to those who resisted the temptations of the Westside (Local Natives at the Troubadour, check the Treewinger’s review here) and Hollywood (LCD Soundsystem at the Palladium) last Friday, TILT in conjunction with Binary and BlowUpLA, brought a trio of artists to the Eastside’s own Echoplex that more than held their own.

Appetizers

Before the trans-continental trio of main attractions could begin, a smattering of early arrivals was greeted by the locally-sourced Pu-Pu platter of openers. All three of these here acts were LA locals, but the quality was… inconsistent–more Panda Express than P.F. Chang’s.

B.R. was… um… to be completely honest, probably totally cool, but performing at 8:30 means your set might happen while a blogging reviewer is taking his sweet time walking to the venue, leading to him only catching the last ten minutes, which were, in light of the rest of the night, relatively unremarkable. Whoops. Anyways.

Short Circuit were definitely the gourmet egg rolls of the openers–just a solid, tasty performance. Big 4/4 kicks and groovy, badass synth lines and the occasional Michael Jackson vocal sample bubbling to the surface got the 15 or so people who had made it in grooving. When SC dropped fellow Angeleno Classixx’s “I’ll Get You,” ankles were broken.

If you like circa-2003 electro-pop-rock, you want to check LexiconDon out. Maybe. Nothing terrible about them, per se–good musicianship, totally capable vocalist–but it was an uninspiring performance, which felt torn between being a dancier Say Anything or a more emo Buddy Akai. Plus the song “Student Body” featured the line “They say no, but it means yes.” Moving on.

Entrees

The complete musical meal.

The sizable space of the Echoplex was filling up when the indomitable Class Actress (Elizabeth Harper) took the stage and kicked off the set with a demure “We’re Class Actress, from Brooklyn.” Cue a few shrieks. For a solid 40 minutes thereafter, Harper’s plaintive, Karen O-reminiscent vocals crawled over and under ominous-yet-dancey synths. Harper’s stated affectation for Madonna was evident, but Class Actress music is darker, introspective and more involving. It was more existential girl than material girl. Backlit with a soft red glow, Harper drew the audience into her world, their attentions rapt, until breaking their hearts and moving on. The highlight was the spot-on rendition of the title track from her debut EP, Journal of Ardency.

Next up was Texas’ Alan Palomo, better known as Neon Indian, who got behind the turntables, black curls bouncing, and proceeded to drop one of the funkiest, eclectic sets seen in the Greater Los Angeles Basin in some time. Leading off with some unidentifiable 80s grooves that seemed to confound the crowd, Palomo soon brought the bounce with a variety of funk-based, yet electro-styled tracks that caused a spontaneous group-get-down on the floor. Although occasional bits and pieces of tracks from Neon Indian and Palomo’s side project Vega could be heard, lives were crushed and brains exploded when he dropped Gary Low’s “You Are a Danger (Romeo Erotic Remix)”, a rare cut that exemplified Palomo’s set. The only blemish on the hour-long set was a series of unfortunate “why isn’t my mixer working” technical difficulties in the last five or so minutes.

Dessert

Closing out the night was CFCF, a.k.a. Mike Silver of Montreal, a soft-spoken young man in blue blazer and blue-striped button down. While his Clark Kent manners were in evidence when he politely requesting a gin and soda at the bar, Silver stepped on stage and busted out like Superman, with big slabs of spacey, 80s style synths. Suffice to say, when he stopped fiddling with his mixer for a second to croon along into the mic with a surprisingly strong and smooth voice, several spontaneous impregnations could be seen occurring throughout the crowd. With a strong Balearic-beat influence combining with the Miami Vice vibe, CFCF somehow pulled off what can only be described as a chill-out dance party. The set was like doing blow on a rotating white bed, with a white tiger, next to a pool, at midnight, on a mountain made of white gold. It was that awesome. He kept it going until the lights came on at 2, the end to a memorable night.