Last night I saw the Golden Filter open for The Presets in Seattle. Both these bands would compose great video game soundtracks, if the goal of the video game was to make out with Italian UFO people from the beautiful desert planet of Astralia. I bet the game is already in production, with wire frames of imaginary humanoids and perfect textures in infinite pixels. All night, I kept seeing colors; the extensive lighting rig didn't let anyone relax for a second.
There is a remoteness and even a coldness of electronic music that scares many people away. On the other hand, that same musically-induced feeling of sonic alienation drew quite a crowd to Neumos. Folk rock is good for being happy and eating a full meal with people you care about, but sometimes people need to feel alone and just dance. I don't think the show sold out, but the devotion and intoxication of the 21+ scene led to unexpected dance/mashing that reminded me of seeing Franz Ferdinand in 2005 with a bunch of wild suburban teens. The Golden Filter played their practiced, shimmering, blogged-out minimal disco to much acclaim. The Presets closed the show with an hour of compressed vocals and binary beats. I missed Copy (Portland-based disco produced and brother of one of the members of Natalie Portman's Shaved Head) open, but I'd seen him before and dance music is mostly about how many people are out on the floor. It wasn't his fault, but he came on too early for a Tuesday night.
On Monday, the previous night, I spent the evening with the musical stylings of Sebastien Tellier at a smaller club in Seattle. I was expecting camp from the bearded, French, American Apparel-promoting, slightly pudgy, and self-described bisexual, and I was not disappointed. The man is a kitsch factory. For example, he leaves the stage after every song, apparently pretending to go snort something, but from where I was standing he was clearly just taking a swig from a water bottle. His music is great bombastic, swollen pop, but his stage antics are laughable. He has a great voice, but it's mostly obscured by the things his music has come to represent to a small segment of very self-aware, urban young people. In truth, I would have liked to see more young people at the show, the kind of imaginary young people that American Apparel uses to promote their products: bright, coiffed, sexy, and sharp looking. Mostly, the audience looked like older bloggers (and their friends) who had let themselves go sometime during 2006 in order to work more hours at Microsoft, Amazon or an ad agency (may I someday join their ranks). The opening band, Chairlift, probably contained the three most attractive people in the room. However, they either aren't that good, or their mix was completely off. I'll probably give them a second chance. They sounded enough like Wang Chung and I'm fairly superficial about these kinds of things.
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