Health – Abe Vigoda – Captain Ahab – Kyle H. Mabson – at The Echo – Los Angeles, CA

First up was Kyle H. Mabson. Mabson’s set was a mash-up / noise, knob-twisting performance. Think Girl Talk meets Black Dice, but without the fun of the former or the innovation of the latter. Mabson sampled lots of hip-hop and nu-metal, obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but it never really amounted to much and was over in about 10 minutes.

 

I was unaware of Captain Ahab before this show and was completely confused for the first few minutes of it. For those of you who, like me, have never seen them before Captain Ahab consists of two dudes, one long-haired bearded fellow who sings vulgar lyrics (example: “I’m rich as fuck/ I don’t give a fuck/ I know you want to fuck me / because I’m rich as fuck!” and “this is not my dick, but I’m going to suck it anyways”), while the second member strips down to his underwear and dances crazily. The music itself sounds like Ace of Base fronted by a crazy person. It took a few songs for me to “get it” but I warmed up to them and was pleasantly surprised by their clever arrangements and energy. As soon as they took the stage the crowd seemed to have tripled and was whipped into a dancing frenzy.

Abe Vigoda took the stage next and played their brand of high energy, reverb-laded, post—punk. I really like these guys, and one thing that I appreciate about them is that for being such a young band they’ve really carved out a sound for themselves. Although I think their new EP (review coming soon) relies a bit too heavily on singing rather than shouting, the new songs are better, for me, live than recorded.

Lastly came Health. They played new songs that the singers of Abe Vigoda described as “really sad”. The vocals on these songs were more pronounced than on their LP, but the songs were still filled with glitchy electronics over frantic, tribal drumming. If anything they were less spazzy than previous songs. The closest thing I can liken it to is Drums Not Dead era Liars.

I respect what they’re doing, but there’s always been something that’s held me back from truly digging Health. They remind me of the Providence noise bands I was really into in college. Maybe I got it out of my system or maybe it’s that I’ve never seen them smile on stage. They always seem to be so damn serious, like they’re not having much fun. Either way they put on a good show. They are impressive musicians and their set was tight, even for new songs.
Thanks Echo for a good time!

 
-Erock-

 

More photos from this show can be seen HERE

 

 
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