A sold out show at the Mayan theater downtown—half fake temple, half salsa club—was for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros the end of a fall/winter tour that started more or less with a well-done spot on Letterman last September. There are a lot of musicians in Edward Sharpe (about ten on stage that night). Sometimes they take their shoes off when they play. Lead singer Alex Ebert wears all white flowy clothes/robes and a red scarf, his long frizzy hair tied up like a yogi. I think it’s widely discussed and admitted, even by some of their biggest fans, that Edward Sharpe dabble in a culty aesthetic. The videos they play onstage, the buses they ride in together, clothes they wear, even lead singer Alex Ebert’s hair = hippy dippy culty. Some of the band members sport shiny dots on their heads. I don’t know what they mean but I assume it’s something spiritual or personal. Maybe it’s just fun. I did read (in Rolling Stone) that Mr. Ebert is a believer in utopia.

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