EVEN by Euros Childs's eccentric, freewheeling standards, this was a wilfully bemusing support slot from the former Gorky's Zygotic Mynci frontman, but one that bodes well for the album, Cheer Gone, released later this month.
Accompanied by Pete
Richardson on bass and drums, often at the same time thanks to an ingenious contraption, the Welshman presented songs from his new record while seeming to pass into a reverie for much of his set.
Tracks such as Autumn Leaves and Summer Days offer a suitably wistful, pastoral ambience, yet with a trippy undercurrent invariably lurking, while Saving Up To Get Married is a plodding but understatedly lovely vision of premarital anticipation.
The Dodos inherited Childs's psychedelic vibe, but after some initial technical gremlins for guitarist and singer Meric Long, drummer Logan Kroeber's pounding tribal rhythms transported the San Franciscan duo to another realm entirely.
With recently recruited percussionist Joe Haener augmenting their sound with a hammering single beat or otherworldly xylophone, this was breathtaking stuff, folksy, mumbled lyrics sung over interlocking rhythms with all the intensity of thrash metal.
Each song followed a similar pattern and there were few discernible breaks between one ending and another beginning, yet the result was consistently electric, the trio urging one another on to increasing intensity. It's That Time Again pushed Long to cry spiritedly over the thundering crescendo, while recent single Red and Purple found Kroeber seemingly possessed by the spirit of an entire Latin carnival, the chorus of "come and join us in the trenches" a melodious beckoning from his bandmate.
The full article contains 273 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
