And yep, sure enough, her simple setup of an acoustic geetar and microphone was too much for the dedicated but ill-equipped Harvard and Stone sound crew, and a peal of feedback toyed with her like a catty ghost intermittently throughout the set. No matter—she was mesmerizing, and not just because she’s the most adorable thing ever, yet more obscure than she deserves, praised by websites as diverse as Curve Magazine and fuckyeahjadecastrinos.com yet oddly difficult to pin down via a formal press release. Since I know little more about her than that Alex Ebert apparently “discovered” her sitting at a coffee shop because he liked the cut of her jib and that magically, poof, she was as talented as all hell and helped make his band famous, it’s hard to say how she got so good. But I really am torn between who’s better, Jade or June Carter, and not just because Jade is alive and can still perform. Both have a penchant for solid, dirt-honest female vocals and for bringing mirth and merriment everywhere they go, with Carter perhaps slightly wittier and Jade with perhaps slightly better pipes.

In case you’re wondering, Jade solo is the same Jade you think you know, just as smiley and happy from two feet away as in every photo of her in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on a festival stage you’ve ever seen. As she tuned and tried to adjust to the crappy sound system by leaving her elevated stool and sitting cross-legged on the low stage, even her eyes smiled, and her eyebrows too. And if I’d had a magnifying glass, I would suspect that her dimples are smile-shaped.

But her songs were not so shiny and happy. Tragic songs poured out of her about loneliness and unimportance: “There is no sailor, there is no sea. There is no you nor even me.” The painful delicacy of the whole thing threatened to be shattered by the Hollywood douche bags in the back of the crowd, who were talking to each other so loudly, my friends and I just barely resisted shooshing them (we should have!). But Jade took it all in stride, dropping songs like little packages of special pain into the laps of the front-row favorites, my favorite being a ditty about angel choirs that could have scored a David Lynch film ten years ago.

It was beautiful, and so of course it was a letdown to see Jade make way for Grace Woodroofe and her more rockin’ band. Nothing wrong with Grace Woodroofe per se—in fact, she too has a beautiful voice, a strong, somber thing that’s put her in the public eye since about age 16. And she’s a major looker, and could be/probably is a model. Maybe there I’m showing my prejudice, but aren’t rock and roll stars supposed to be a little ugly? Rock is supposed to transform plain-janes like Joan Jett and Roger Daltrey into steaming piles of sex, and if you start off already looking like a smoking-hot damsel with alabaster skin, well, where’s the charm?

But my puttering inability to engage with the band wasn’t all Olivia Munn-ery and the backwards prejudice in beauty—there was something lacking in this band. Not so much a salad of sounds as a sludge in between, Woodroofe’s act couldn’t quite seem to make up its mind about whether it was hard rock or poignant songcraft, and if it was supposed to be the latter, well, songs rhyming “lover,” “father,” and “mother” might as well just go into “I’m a servant/I’m a saint” and become Alanis Morissette. Actually, the template for Woodroofe’s act seems to be that more respectable 90’s icon, PJ Harvey (and I don’t just say that because they’re both Aussies). But Harvey in her youth always had a hard, dark, crazy, jealous edge, and I can’t say that I felt a whole lot of danger in Woodroofe’s performance—certainly not enough danger to scare away the aforementioned douches.

Though that too is prejudice: maybe the douche bags just show up every night, like roaches, for the architecture. I also saw a ton of chill, happy-as-hell fans in the front cheering Woodroofe on, clearly loving it, Mia Doi Todd herself among them, and me! So maybe what I was seeing was a lackluster performance by an otherwise respectable artist. But really, Woodroofe’s was not an inspiring show. Even closing with a cover of the Stooges’ “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” couldn’t redeem things, as Woodroofe bounced around in her designer-looking white dress that has never seen a stain in its life, much less a jar of peanut butter.

But then the stage filled up with the main course in our aural dinner: Adanowsky, with a new band that looked like it was made up of the Bizarro world Village People: a mixed martial arts villain on guitar, a white nerdy thing on keyboards who could have been in the Zombies, and a bassist with hair like a Brazilian Chris Ziegler!

Adanowsky himself, AKA Adan Jodorowsky, might at first seem to have a pretty boy pedigree. An actor cum musician who likes to unbutton his shirt a little during the show, and the child of director Alejandro Jodorowsky, clearly many ladies find him gorgeous as well—and even if the gals don’t respond immediately, he’ll strike first by staging videos with Devendra Banhart and a bunch of naked ladies covered in makeup having an orgy around him. But as an actor, his films have been insane and bloody, and as a musician, he’s punk enough to actually engage with the crowd. When the set started, a drunken couple was actively making out right on the stage, and as the band began to play, Adanowsky pried them off the stage with a mic stand poke, then gracefully avoided a full-on brawl when the man of the pair tried to pick a fight: “Don’t worry, I won’t sleep with your wife!”

When I saw Adanowsky at SXSW earlier this year, it was in a lineup that included some great bands such as Shannon and the Clams and the Growlers. But Adanowsky in particular impressed me, skirting the line somehow between smooth country rock and Murph and the Magic Tones but, you know, with a more international intrigue flair, singing in Spanish and French as often as English.

This new line-up had even more zing, and more swing, and more sex appeal, possibly because he was less jet-lagged and better dressed than he’d been in Austin in the spring. His press people have been pushing the legend of little Adan Jodorowsky learning to dance from James Brown—it sounds more to me like he just got to meet James Brown as a kid, like once, but hey, he certainly busted a move Wednesday night, twirling and dipping and bringing a kind of coy macho sexiness that we haven’t really seen since 80’s Prince. At one point, he stopped singing and literally said “I want to give you a little bit of kisses,” then leaned into the audience as a smorgasbord of women jumped out of their boyfriends’ arms and up to the front of the stage to get a big wet peck on the cheek or three. The songs were a mix of Spanish, French, and English, some of which he dedicated to Devendra, who was holding court behind the turntables in his shocking short black locks.

Not being a polyglot, or even bilingual like seemingly most of the audience, I missed out on some of the lyrics that weren’t en Inglés. But on the rare acoustic numbers, I could make out the sentiments just fine, and on the rock numbers—well, what more do you need to understand when a beautiful young man coos “Jam du Jour” while wiggling his hips, and when the need to dance propels my feet anywhere but out to my car?

Intending only to stay until a safe bedtime, I stuck around for the entire thing, wondering when late November would approach so I could get the new Adanowsky disk coming out with some of these tunes on it. It’s both shallow and deep, the way post-war guitar-based music sounds best. With his hairstyle and approach to music, clearly he’s got one foot in the Serge Gainsbourg legacy and another in the world of smooth soul, and from that, he’s able to strut like a shaman.

-Dan Collins

Photos from Coachella Day 2 including:

Band of Skulls
Beach House
Devo
Dirty Projectors
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Faith No More
Girls
Hot Chip
MGMT
Muse
Old Crow Medicine Show
Porcupine Tree
Portugal the Man
Shooter Jennings & Hierophant
The Dead Weather
The XX
White Rabbits

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(from Gorilla Manor out in February on Frenchkiss)

L.A. darlings Local Natives have had a big year—a UK tour, a record deal, and a road trip with Fool’s Gold and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Bassist Andy Hamm stepped outside on a chilly afternoon in Seattle to share with us some of the highlights. This interview by Amber Hollingsworth.

I saw you guys open at the El Rey last month and I thought you just stole the show. I’m so excited to hear you’re touring with Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros—how did that come together?
Andy Hamm: We hung out with a couple of guys from Fool’s Gold, who are also on the tour, and they asked us to jump on. We were like, “God, Fool’s Gold already has anywhere from 7 to 11 members, and Edward Sharpe has anywhere from 12 to 15,” but it’s cool because it’s like an L.A. representation. I think it’s hard to find three bands that get along and all are doing their own thing—nobody’s really stepping on each other’s toes stylewise or musically.
What’s it like hanging out with a huge troupe of hippies? I just imagine so many hugs on this tour.
Andy Hamm: One big happy hippy family? Yeah, everybody’s really cool. There are so many of them, you hang out with a new person every night. And on stage, we play during the Edward Sharpe set, sometimes a bunch of their guys jump up on one of our songs, and same thing for Fool’s Gold. Edward Sharpe lets us use a bunch of their equipment too, and the guys who do sound for our shows actually played in Fool’s Gold. So yeah, the more I think about it, it is this big commune of L.A. people who play music together and share everything, and it works out to everybody’s benefit.
I wanted to congratulate you on getting signed to Frenchkiss Records. How did that happen?
Andy Hamm: Yeah, thanks! It was important for us to find someone who’s on the same page, and we’d been talking to them for awhile. They saw us I think the first time we played in New York 6 to 8 months ago, and we just kept in touch. We met with a few others, but with Frenchkiss, they just thought what we thought. That’s what was most important to us when partnering up with a label—finding people we get along with and who let us do our thing.
Your album is due out in the U.S. in February. There’s been so much buzz about your live performances—what can we expect from the Local Natives studio album?
Andy Hamm: What I love about it is they’re two totally different things: if you listen to the album and like it, then hopefully you’ll love the live show. The feedback that we get is that the live show is more energetic and a bit more in-your-face. The album shows off the separate orchestrated parts, and the melodies come out a lot more. If people see us and expect to hear exactly what the record sounds like—you’re not going to get that, but you’ll definitely get a new experience.
I like the band name Local Natives, it’s subtly funny. Who came up with it?
Andy Hamm: I actually came up with it. We were in the middle of recording the album when we decided we needed a name, and we were going through lists and lists. But I liked Local Natives; it rolls off the tongue and it’s redundant in sort of a quirky way. We thought it was a good representation of us too because, as a group, everybody writes and everybody contributes—it’s very much a family effort within the band.
Is everyone actually from L.A.?
Andy Hamm: I grew up in Golden, Colorado. Ryan, Taylor, and Kelsey all grew up in Orange County, and Matt grew up in Chino Hills.
You guys have been living in a house together in Silverlake. Give me some secrets—who has the most annoying habit?
Andy Hamm: Ugh, there are a lot of annoying habits. Taylor’s probably the worst with the dishes and leaving lights on. Ryan’ll sleep all day long if you let him, so we’ll be in the van ready to go on tour or head to the practice studio and he’s always the last one out. We also own a rat named Burpy Christ that lives upstairs with Matt, I don’t even want to get into that.
Haha fair enough. So quick story: I was walking back from your show and I ran into my friend and I said “Oh man I just saw this band Local Natives, they blew me away!” and he gets this look on his face and says, “Yeah, I know them. My ex-girlfriend broke up with me to go out with one of them.” My question is, have you ever stolen anything from someone?
Andy Hamm: Wow! Well, I used to be quite a Dennis the Menace. I was troublesome but I always got away with it. I knew how to talk to people and be sweet. As far as stealing, I was pretty young, must’ve been 5th grade, but I had a friend who lived across the street from me (he’s one of my best friends to this day), and I remember I was at his house and I was looking for a toy or something in his room, and I saw a $5 bill just chilling there and something just clicked. I grabbed it and put it in my pocket and then I went in to him, and I could feel the guilt weighing in, so I just said “Uhh my mom’s calling me, I gotta go home.” I ran across the street and got home and 5 minutes later the doorbell rings and it’s him. He’s like, “Hey man, there was $5 in my room, did you take it?” And it’s that moment of truth, and the guilt’s weighing on me and I’m like, “Yeah… I got it right here,” and I gave it back. I remember I couldn’t hang out with him for what was probably only a week but what felt like a year.
So your bad behavior was pretty innocent at the heart of it.
Andy Hamm: I probably did a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t have done when I was little, but I was never that kid that would walk into a Radio Shack and grab a CD player. It was more like water guns and snowballs, stuff that a young boy living in Golden, Colorado would do.
I read on your blog about the fan in Vermont who hosted you in her home when you toured through there. Is that a typical Local Natives approach to touring, just get there and hope to find a place to sleep?
Andy Hamm: We do that in almost every town. It works. It’s a combination of us not having a lot of money and you know, our music just seems to attract very good-natured people. So we’ll usually just announce it in the set. We’ll say, “Hey, we have sleeping bags, we don’t smell that bad, so if you have room on your floor…” and I’d say 90% of the time there’s at least one person that says, “I’ve got a tiny one-bedroom but if you don’t mind sleeping on the tile floor in the kitchen, you can do it.” Luckily no one in the band is a prima donna, so it works.
So the other 10% of the time, do you end up sleeping in very sketchy places?
Andy Hamm: I’d be lying if I said it’s always been hunky dory. There was one time, I think it was our first time we had toured outside of the West Coast, and we stayed in Philadelphia. It was approaching last call, around 2:30 a.m., everybody had been drinking, and it was one of those nights where partying came above being responsible and finding a place to crash, so none of us had really met anybody with a place we could crash at, and there wasn’t a hotel in sight. We met this guy who was just sitting by himself at the bar, and he was like, “I loved you guys.” And he was older, like mid-40s I would guess—he just sort of had a weird vibe about him. But it was 3:00 in the morning, the bar was closing, and so we followed the guy to his apartment. Well first he took us to this bar that was still open, and he just sat there and drank I think three PBRs and two shots of whiskey, and we literally just sat there in the bar with him. Then he took us to his apartment, and he put on… this is really weird the more I think about it… he put on a murder mystery on a record player. It was like someone reading a murder mystery, a book on tape, but it was on record. And we all laid down and he just let it play. So the story’s playing while I’m trying to sleep, about this guy who’s murdering women. And then I woke up and the dude was just sitting by himself in the room we crashed in by an open window with a 6-pack of PBR and chain smoking cigarettes. This was at like 5:00 in the morning. So, I didn’t go to sleep past that—I don’t think any of us went to sleep. I remember leaning over and looking at Kelsey and his eye was open, giving me that look like, “Do we run now and save our lives or do we just pretend we’re asleep?”
Did you bail as soon as the sun came up?
Andy Hamm: Yeah I mean everything turned out fine. Who knows, that guy was very nice to us on the surface, maybe he was just a character, I don’t know. Hopefully he doesn’t read this and come seek us out or something…

LOCAL NATIVES WITH VOXHAUL BROADCAST AND CHIEF ON TUE., DEC. 22, AT THE ECHO, 1822 W. SUNSET BLVD, LOS ANGELES. 8:30PM / $5 ADVANCE / $10 AT DOOR / AND A CAN OF FOOD / ALL AGES. ATTHEECHO.COM LOCAL NATIVES’ GORILLA MANOR IS DUE OUT IN THE U.S. ON FRENCHKISS RECORDS FEBRUARY 16, 2010.

1st and 2nd bands Las Cafeteras and Fool’s Gold—appropriately many-membered and lovers of a long jam—are also, like Edward Sharpe, both from LA. Coming from the Eastside Café, talented and young, playing jawbones, wooden stomp boxes, finger harps, and guitars, Las Cafeteras draw from Mexican folk music to create a sound that comes together in a way transcending the simple instruments they play. The music was very honest and I loved watching them share their good time on stage.
Fool’s Gold—also multi-instrumental but more electric guitars, guys in tight pants (some of them white), drummers in robes—played a layered afro-pop pulling the full joy and life out of a few simple notes and riffs. There were rarely less than 5 percussionists on stage, and they all dressed like very different strangers at the Cha-Cha. Maybe I should say that, more often than not, this half hippy stuff usually bugs me. But what they play is really great. Days later one of their tunes still runs through my head. People stood up to dance. At the end of their set, a few members of Ed Sharpe joined, which was fine, until the jam went on maybe a bit too long, prompting Fool’s Gold frontman Luke Top to lay down his guitar and sweetly walk off stage before the tune finished. It’s important to know when to say when.

Then, down comes a backdrop of the yellow brick road leading off to Oz. Ed Sharpe takes the stage.

Watching the kids on the floor dance reminded me of a Girl Talk show. There was lots of jumping. And maybe because the band itself didn’t pay as much attention to the subtleties in some of the their songs as they could have—as I’d expected—or maybe because the percussion was up in the mix, most of the time it seemed weird, but everyone was jumping.

By their encores especially, it really felt like the band had created a sing-along. The stage was full of kids sitting Indian style, the audience was instructed to take a seat, Ebert had perched himself on the barricade above some of the more doe-eyed ladies, touching his scarf, etc. The kids on the floor who’d been jumping, who were now sitting, were caught up in the pop tune of the music. Sometimes people like something because it’s familiar. We’ll sing because we know the words, because they sound great, but in the end it doesn’t matter too much what they really mean. Alex Ebert and the band weren’t trying to convince anybody of anything. They knew they were preaching to the choir. Maybe I trust someone more when they have something to prove.

The other day I was at the bar, telling this lady about the show, and she asked me to compare seeing Edward Sharpe to a dessert. What kind of dessert would it be? I answered pretty quick that it was a caramel apple, something kinda natural and old fashioned, a little over the top, definitely delicious, easy to share, but not always the most filling.

—Dominic Ciccodicola

Alex Ebert + Har Mar Superstar

Pizza!, the latest addition to Manimal Vinyl’s roster, opened festivities with upbeat songs about skulls and the recession. “Did that boy just say the N-word?!” exclaimed a leather vested motorcycle man.

Pizza!

Weave’s outfits—surfer dudes on Venus, splattered with braille. The band beamed energy from their instruments that formed a constellation of Siouxie Sioux and tropical animals above people’s heads. A nod goes to Ivory’s commitment to a high bikini line.

Weave

Corridor, aka Michael Quinn, comes on epic—like leaping from a building but not hitting the ground. His music belongs to the ethereal realization you won’t crash. The wind whipped his hair wildly as he drummed on his cello. He shares alternacoustic mystique with Kurt Vile, except Quinn’s more metal. Bill & Ted might arrive and whisk him away to the future.

Corridor

Tiffany Preston beats the cowbell like it’s a drum pad and vice versa. As the biting wind trapped Rainbow Arabia‘s notes in the air for a second, it became appealing to sew a thread passing back and forth between cowbell, pad, Danny’s keys, congas, and back to guitar. The wind disentangled Tiffany’s voice from the mic effects—noticing her natural sound’s ornaments.

Rainbow Arabia

Prolonged exposure to We Are The World nears brain-washing. People think Ed Sharpe has a cultish power? I’m more likely to join We Are The World—their costumes as monk habits, and prayer as a Ryan Heffington dance routine. Beneath the sensory aerobics, I noticed, they all wear different shoes.

We Are The World

Respite from the World’s immaculate vision was found inside Pappy & Harriet’s, hopping and twisting around a shiny ghettoblaster’s pixie stick, midi karaoke beats. Matt Jones has Sonny Bono hair. His Jonesin’ partner, Jen Jones, crosses Debbie Harry and Tifffany—the latter accentuated by shoulder pads. The couple resides in San Francisco, exchanging romantic one-liners with distortion set on 11.

Jonesin’

New band members appear with Fool’s Gold all the time. But here’s hoping a rosy-cheeked preteen playing percussion tonight makes the permanent roster. Six chickens, seventeen marbles, and two helicopters also squeezed in on stage. The intro to “Suprise Hotel” lasted for miles—teasing that tropical guitar line between Lewis Pesacov and Matt Popieluch until the audience fully surrendered—before Luke Top uttered the song’s first word.

Fool’s Gold (*see the kid in the back right!)

With instruments and band members protruding in all directions, Ed Sharpe & Magnetic Zeros swooned on stage like an amoeba. The audience was sucked in. Alex Ebert suggested a volunteer get even closer and suck his ________. I imagined Ebert pulling a bathplug out of his pants and the whole audience slipping into a glowing light between his legs.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

A fifteen-minute jam during Amanda Jo Williams’ last song put the country butter in psychedelic. Having a full band lay into her songs slowed things down so the rhythms could crack their joints. Amanda’s kooky voice usually whisks the audience away on horse rides after bunnies, but tonight the spread-out sound kept the audience stomping within these four walls.

Amanda Jo Williams

When both members of Hecuba collapsed on the floor, their heads touched the way Lady And The Tramp share a noodle. Fog gathered. Keeping a hand playing the keyboard, Jon Beasley rubbed his face on Isabelle Albuquerque’s cheek while she hunched over her knees. The audience huddled around as its ship reached the heart of outer space.

Hecuba

Laco$te’s X rolled around, climbed tables, and bent backwards during a short, electric set—so high charged it blew some fuses, including the band members’. Most people believed the sound splitting was a deliberate trippy effect. Laco$te could’ve mimed their remaining songs and kept the audience bobbing along.

Laco$te

Cold did not care much that the sun wanted to shine on Sunday. Voice On Tape’s echoing moans and romantic guitar strumming made me want scotch and a gambler’s ring.

Voice On Tape

He’s My Brother She’s My Sister performed when the air was white. You could barely see them when looking at the musicians straight on. This band’s day-after-glamorous-debauchery plus a banjo felt so right—considering the far-out night many people were still living. The audience slapped its knee and sloppily clapped along to what might have been Manimal’s theme song.

He’s My Brother She’s My Sister

Shivering, lacking vitamins and sleep, the audience sat cross-legged on Pappy’s dancefloor during Ariana Delawari. Gentle detailed guitar was punctuated when she struck hard chords or sincere moments—her eyebrows pleated like a sea for rain. Lulled, you forget she might be singing about politics and terrorism.

Adriana Delawari

Voices Voices was the last thing I could see before the boogie-man chased me home. For a finale to the melting rainbow they stirred until dissolved, the girls should have ridden off on motorcycles across the darkening desert—trenchcoats flapping behind them.

Voices Voices

Lips chapped the minute they tasted the air at Pappy & Harriet’s—those allergic to Chapstick have since cracked and ripped every time a smile recollects the Manimal Fest journey.

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—Daiana Feuer (words and photo)

Stream: Fool’s Gold “Surprise Hotel”

(from the self-released “Surprise Hotel” 45)

Whether Fool’s Gold sings about the earth, honey, or how meshuggah you are, the music takes effect in the body’s lovehandles. Suddenly, the pelvis and ribcage start a furious ping-pong match against each other. Of all Fool’s Gold’s residency nights this month, ‘twas the eve of April 13 that rocked the most. Of course, the band filled their dates at the Echo with cream-of-the-crop performers—Daedelus blows minds as often as most people blow their noses. But on April’s second Monday, Glasser, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, and Sweaters, took shape on stage in all their wings and chest hair glory. This happened to be the night of L.A. RECORD’s issue release soiree at Cha Cha Lounge. But, here we were with Glasser, featured this issue bathed in sunlight surrounded by L.A. wilderness—forsaking beers with the bros to impress rhythm on the minds of those interested in taking it in. Her black dress was lined with silk, colorful, flying-squirrel wings, and she danced to her personal drum with an entire band. E. And The Zeroes later came on in desert attire. Blue and green lights tinting the band’s skin stands out more in memory than their precise outfits. The band crawled on its knees, and rocked back and forth with so much joy that anyone feeling a bit goth today would have vomited flowers. Pairing these bands with a natural trajectory to getting loose worked wonders upon the bohemians.

—Daiana Feuer

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