There was a sweet show yesterday featuring recently crowned Best New Music inductee Real Estate alongside future Underwater Peoples labelmates Pill Wonder with Northwest homegrowns Rainbow Bridge sandwiched between. Holocene, the very slick venue where the bands were playing, also had a DJ spinning some 80s-tastic tracks in between sets with acid washed stock video footage playing on a huge projector screen — mixing nicely with the “chillwave” vibe of the acts.
I was excited to check out openers Pill Wonder just because I noticed they had a 12” in the queue and was hoping that they played some of their new material (a man can only gauge so much from four tracks on their myspace). I wasn’t disappointed as the seven piece (!) band exceeded their 30 minute time slot churning out their patented psychedelic tinged garage rock for a crowd of about forty. They ended strong with a solid funkadelic/r&b number with bassist Hans doing his best James Brown impression. All-in-all, it was a lively set.
Next in line was the male/female guitar/drums duo Rainbow Bridge. With a set of trolls on stage and the drummer donning a fake beard, I was halfway expecting a quirky kitsch act. Much to my surprise, they played some kick ass garage rock tunes which made me think about how Jack & Meg White probably started out playing to similar crowds in Detroit in the late 90s. Undeniably the crowd pleasure for the group (and arguably the whole night) was their hit track “Big Wave Rider“. With simply sung lyrics “big wave rider / try and ride a little higher / you’re a glider / smile wider” over sparse instrumentation, it didn’t take long for the audience to join in and sing out the chorus.
By the time Real Estate took the stage at 11pm, the crowd had swelled to around eighty or so folks, mostly clad in skinny jeans and eighties regalia of some sorts. In response to the size, the band said this was one of the best crowds on the tour — something that I am sure Porlanders hear quite frequently. Any questions about whether this band was overhyped or undeserving of a constant stream of buzz since their SXSW showing were put to rest when they opened up with the infectious guitar line on “Beach Comber”. Now most reviews I’ve seen of Real Estate tend to follow a madlib like recipe: “Their [adj. / wobbly] guitars invokes a sense of [childhood story of the beach] — with the repetitious [instrument] enforcing that feeling”, however, when you see them live you get a sense on how much more this group is than some band riding the “chillwave” fad of ’09.
Through the glimmering tautophony lies these bluesy syncopated guitar solos that Matthew Mondanile (aka Ducktails) and Martin Courtney shine on — not to mention the commanding power bassist Alex Bleeker has on his instrument (something that will surely translate over to his “solo” work with The Freaks). As time elapsed, you couldn’t help but be swept away by their performance and get lost in their sound. This partly affected my determining of the setlist, as I tended to loose interest in knowing the exact song they were playing and got caught up more with the feeling they were invoking through their tunes:
1 // Beach Comber
2 // Pool Swimmers
3 // (?)
4 // Fake Blues
5 // Suburban Beverage
6 // Black Lake
7 // (?)
8 // (?)
9 // Atlantic City
10 // Fake Blues
I think it goes without saying that if you get a chance to see this band play in an intimate venue, do it because these guys are just going to get more of a following as time goes by. Here is a video of them playing “Fake Blues” at SXSW this past year along with some songs of theirs:
