A Sunny Day In Glasgow: Show Review at the Mohawk

Monday night at the Mohawk offered an eclectic smattering of Indie rock that culminated with Philadelphia-based quartet, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, offering up their dreamy yet abstruse signature pop sound for a more obscure-indie inclined Austin audience.  While the headliners were clearly the draw for much of the crowd,  local openers, Wildfires and even more so an all-female band called The Villetes, quickly won over fans and turned heads with their performances.

Wildfires were on first and can be characterized as your prototypical indie rock sound with some singer/songwriter influence that is tangential to Ty Segall, Kurt Vile, and the band Tennis.  Each of their songs was predictable in its structure and their lead singer’s eyes-closed whine for each chorus began to cross from endearing to annoying by the end of the set.  Wildfires is at its best when the synergy of their guitars begins to sound more like Shoegaze rock, becoming more similar to the bands like Oshin and Wild Nothing.

The Villettes were on next and, while their music is complex and seemingly profound, their appearance is not.  Dressed like many girls in the crowd and, constantly joking onstage with chipper demeanors and frequent schoolgirl laughing outbursts, the Villettes would drop the levity as soon as they hit the first note in a song.  The band’s sound was as if the Dixie Chicks had been deep fried in gospel music and seasoned with sprinkles of acid punk and grunge (Like the DC there are two sisters in the band).  Envision if the river sirens in O Brother Where Art Thou had stumbled upon some electronic instruments, by accident, and begun making music.  The Villettes were captivating and far and away the highlight of the night, especially upon finding out that these gems are localy based and this wouldn’t be the last time I would see them live.  Their final song “Across the Sea”  in itself is enough to declare your love for this feminine folk foursome.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow isn’t ashamed to layer their music with as many bells and whistles as they can find.  Taking a note from My Bloody Valentine and Animal Collective, this band abides by no compass when composing music, and constantly lets their dream pop devolve into cacophony, only to be resuscitated later in the song.  The disorder in their music can only be matched by that found in the band’s lineup which has six past members and not one current member who was part o the original lineup.  The band, once touted as a contender for “Album of the Year” in 2006,  is now on it’s fourth album with little direction and the unwillingness to let the natural processes take over and break up the band.  While the band creates a spectacle onstage and occasionally strings together a series of comprehensible pop hooks, the music is more like a string of loosed arrows containing sound bytes, vocal snippets, and strung together choruses, of which only a few hit their mark.  One attribute that is refreshing about their music is that when they do find a comfortable sound, they avoid the complacency of overdoing it, in favor of continuing their genre-defying adventure.

Monday night at the Mohawk offered an eclectic smattering of Indie rock that culminated with Philadelphia-based quartet, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, offering up their dreamy yet abstruse signature pop sound for a more obscure-indie inclined Austin audience.  While the headliners were clearly the draw for much of the crowd,  local openers, Wildfires and even more so an all-female band called The Villetes, quickly won over fans and turned heads with their performances.

Wildfires were on first and can be characterized as your prototypical indie rock sound with some singer/songwriter influence that is tangential to Ty Segall, Kurt Vile, and the band Tennis.  Each of their songs was predictable in its structure and their lead singer’s eyes-closed whine for each chorus began to cross from endearing to annoying by the end of the set.  Wildfires is at its best when the synergy of their guitars begins to sound more like Shoegaze rock, becoming more similar to the bands like Oshin and Wild Nothing.

The Villettes were on next and, while their music is complex and seemingly profound, their appearance is not.  Dressed like many girls in the crowd and, constantly joking onstage with chipper demeanors and frequent schoolgirl laughing outbursts, the Villettes would drop the levity as soon as they hit the first note in a song.  The band’s sound was as if the Dixie Chicks had been deep fried in gospel music and seasoned with sprinkles of acid punk and grunge (Like the DC there are two sisters in the band).  Envision if the river sirens in O Brother Where Art Thou had stumbled upon some electronic instruments, by accident, and begun making music.  The Villettes were captivating and far and away the highlight of the night, especially upon finding out that these gems are localy based and this wouldn’t be the last time I would see them live.  Their final song “Across the Sea”  in itself is enough to declare your love for this feminine folk foursome.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow isn’t ashamed to layer their music with as many bells and whistles as they can find.  Taking a note from My Bloody Valentine and Animal Collective, this band abides by no compass when composing music, and constantly lets their dream pop devolve into cacophony, only to be resuscitated later in the song.  The disorder in their music can only be matched by that found in the band’s lineup which has six past members and not one current member who was part o the original lineup.  The band, once touted as a contender for “Album of the Year” in 2006,  is now on it’s fourth album with little direction and the unwillingness to let the natural processes take over and break up the band.  While the band creates a spectacle onstage and occasionally strings together a series of comprehensible pop hooks, the music is more like a string of loosed arrows containing sound bytes, vocal snippets, and strung together choruses, of which only a few hit their mark.  One attribute that is refreshing about their music is that when they do find a comfortable sound, they avoid the complacency of overdoing it, in favor of continuing their genre-defying adventure.