The Ashcan

YACHT rocks

Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by Anupa in Concerts, Music

Photo via panicmanual

YACHT—”a band, a belief system and a business”—is the kind of act that exceeds every expectation you might have of seeing them live. The dance-pop duo is making their living off of showboating, playing energetic shows masked as old-timey country revivals in small, packed bars.

But before YACHT came on, my friends and I got to Wrongbar in time to catch the very last strains of Bobby Birdman’s set and say a quick hello to electro-pop singer MNDR. Here’s the thing about kooky singers making synth music: it’s never usually very good because so many “artists” are doing it. I mean, sure people will dance around and have a good time, but in the end it doesn’t pull you in. MNDR is precisely the opposite. So she looks weird, with these gigantic white-framed glasses, but she’s working the board and belting her heart out. Talking to the audience, intro-ing songs and telling us about each one also meant we could invest in her performance. It’s incredibly difficult to be a one-woman show and still command attention from your audience, but I’d say everyone was pretty rapt. On a smoke break after her six-song set, I overheard more than a few people saying they enjoyed it—a difficult task for an opener.

Afterward, MNDR DJ’d while the packed crowd waited for YACHT. The backers—including Bobby Birdman on bass—came out first dressed in tuxedos then leads Jona and Claire, Jona in a ’60s, back-country style white tux with suspenders. They jumped, and jumped, and jumped, and jumped. Claire made black lipstick look so good. They sang and played guitar and had more personality than I’ve seen in most performers. They left me wondering why they don’t have a bigger following, because their music is the strangest combination of upbeat pop belying semi-apocalyptic lyrics and themes. At one point, Jona jumped down into the crowd—which had been dancing sweatily for some time now—and got everyone around him to get down on one knee (and we obliged, I mean, who wanted to be the loser still standing?) and follow his lead in an ominously aspirational invocation. So we’re all bent over and Jona is crouched in the middle, preaching to us—telling us to take control of our lives and, essentially, stop letting the man get us down. It really brought home the theme of the show: a glorious indie-pop revival.

Tags: Bobby Birdman, Indie Music, MNDR, YACHT