It was indie-electro pop night at Bowery Ballroom with three U.S. bands bringing their brand of pop music to a half-full room. You can have a P-meter (pop meter) to determine the amount of pop music filling the room.
Starlight Mints headlined tonight, and their level of pop was about 75% percent. The Oklahoma five-piece have a dark, yet playful edge. Imagine a cartoon version of a nightmare and you've got the picture. The band is easy to enjoy, the music has a theatrically and an instant bounce. With the rear projection of geometric shapes, it added a sense of grandier to songs like "Eyes of the Night" from their new release Drowaton and "The Bandit" off of The Dream That Stuff Was Made of.
You can compare the band to a lot of contemporary artists -- fellow Oklahomans Flaming Lips, Stephen Malkmus and Campus Van Beethoven. I also kept on thinking of Oingo Bongo, because they also had a cinematic quality to their music and a sense of a child's version of a nightmare. With "The Bandit," it sounded similar to "El Scorcho" from Weezer's Pinkerton.
I think what makes the Starlight Mints stand out is their heavy use of programmed beats, acoustic guitars and Allan Vest's off-kilter voice. There's a ideal that everything and anything could happen on a song, so each track can stand alone on it own. They played a tight, fast-moving set, with one encore and a drunken keyboard player who loved the sound of her voice between songs. The wine will do it to you.
Ronnie James Dios (Malos) wavered between 30-60 percent on the P-meter. They used the least amount of electronics to their set, instead focusing on a more DIY feel to their music. The California four-piece definitely has a West Coast feel to their music -- at times it's sunny pop, other times it's more of a roots rock flavor. Although I've been wanting to see them for a while, they played well live, but some of their songs left my wanting them to speed up their set and get to the next song. Like any band, they are hit or miss with each song.
The big treat of the night was the opening slot given to Austin band The Octopus Project, which is appropriate name for the band because it fells like there are many arms making densely arranged music. To start, the four-piece band (making it 8 arms) put on electric outlet masks. Those three pronged outlets do resemble a face with a "Wow!" expression. Besides having the most myspace friends in their profile, The Project had the most energy on stage with the three male members thrashing around to the beat, while the female member stayed in place to program the keyboard and play the theremin.
I found their music the most fascinating of the night because they were the most danceable music of the night. Electronic indie pop music you can move around to -- who thunk it? The band combines hip-hop or disco drumming with heavy grunge or distorted guitars and a lot of krautrock electronics. At times it's spacey and ethereal, other times it's hard driving and pulsating. They had the best rear projection of the night with images of Karen Carpenter drumming, footage from a hand playing with a yellow, gooey substance and scenes from Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. I knew that Cinema Studies degree would come in handy someday.
The P-meter gives them a 50-80 percent on the amount of pop substance in their songs.
As an end note, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady was in the audience tonight. Not hard to pick out since the joint barely had 300 people tonight. The three bands are better in these mid-size venues because their music was expansive, not suited for a small, intimate venue.
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