Music Go Music illustration by Teira Johnson

Getting right to it: This is the music of the next cult.  A generation of spiritually lost and weary children discovering a new cosmology and moral order in the beaming, reaching arms of Gala Bell, wearing—as she did at the Echo—white shirt, black bowtie, suspenders buried in flair (carnival masks, tigers, mouths, hands) and a heart-shaped, glittery belt buckle, beckoning constantly with incredibly long arms.  This is the soundtrack of the believers’ afterlife, where everyone is a laser, bouncing off an eternal, ever-loving disco-ball.  Is that hyperbole?  Potentially, when I saw them, I was influenced by the dire, apocalyptic situation outside, with the tornado touchdowns and the streets becoming rivers and all that, but everyone else seemed to be feeling the epic amounts of joy that cascades off Music Go Music.  When Gala Bell noticed her drink was missing, four materialized immediately from the audience, with one dude holding his whiskey and water just below her eye-line for nearly an entire song, his arm never tiring.  On one side of the stage, confirming my theories that Abba is the new Black Flag, long-haired, big guys with muscles emphatically punched the air, making excited, warrior motions.  Though Music Go Music seems to be plundering from ’70s dance pop, they are not running on the fumes of nostalgia. They propel everything forward with intensity and precision, elevating lyrics about hearts and love into feverish, epic anthems, bridging the gap between Bjorn Ulvaeus and Dimmu Borgir’s Shagrath.  As the set drew to a close and the band exited the stage, the sweaty, ecstatic crowds funneled into the street, finding that the rain had stopped with promises that the Los Angeles sun would return and that everything had turned out fine.

—Gerard Olson