Introducing someone to a band you know backwards and forwards is almost like watching someone lose their virginity. Awkward, confused, they make funny noises and shy remarks; their eyes widen as they try following different rhythms; a little sweat breaks on their upper lip; their hips quake. “It makes me feel warm…There’s a lot of them…” My friend’s simple statements suggested she was deeply involved in revelation. “I feel love.” She also commented, “It sounds like Simba being born,” and later, “It’s a Jewish wedding on a cruise ship.” Ah yes, a perfect scenario to escape and get freaky in some locked room with a cruise attendant or friend of the marrying couple. Not enough people talk about the sexual imperative in Fool’s Gold’s music. You can smell it in the center of the crowd—a place only the daring should venture—glands and orifices awaken in sybaritic display. It’s intoxicating. Enough to make you faint, really.

The many band members—tonight featuring the addition of a feller that usually does sound at the Echo in place of Matt Popieluch—celebrated their short return home before going back on tour. The sax and guitar became one during “Surprise Hotel.” Bassist/singer Luke Top remarked after a long “Poseidon” that it was the best Lewis Pesacov had ever played it on guitar. What went on behind Pesacov’s eyes, which remained closed almost the entire time?

Was he imagining a storm met by a door which opens onto the Orient where babes in sexy lingerie beckon him forth? Or does the experience transcend conventional realities, becoming a pure envelopment of sound, and the rhythms weave as if pulled on a giant loom that requires 15 operators stretching the fabric in all directions. What is the true nature of image and sound as they co-exist in the mind?? I dunno!

The band’s descent into the audience usually indicates the finale, but this time it served as psychedelic intermission. “The World Is All There Is” broke down to its core rhythm, all the way to silence as the band dispersed through the crowd chanting “whoa oh ohhhh,” ya know, as they do.

Then Luke Top reappeared on stage, followed by the rest of the band starting up again with the addition of Tearist’s Yasmine Kittles on metal pipe, Entrance’s Paz Lenchantin on maracas, and Guy Blakeslee on shaker and invisible keyboard—his unoccupied hand played the air where imaginary keys floated beneath his fingers. Additionally Stewart Cole of Ed Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros almost exploded with enthusiasm as he shook a shakable. A sign blinked over his head saying, “I fucking love this song!” All the musicians packed on stage shot their arms out and bent their knees as cogs in a machine—or an old wooden toy whose inner parts whistle, creak, and slide to turn its wheels. Some sounds, you can’t figure out what is making them. It’s all very sexy at this point, like an orgy.

—Daiana Feuer (words + photo)