Fool's Gold (The Tony Castles / Young Empires)
El Mocambo. Wednesday, July 21, 2010.
Wednesday night at the El Mo. There were metaphorical tumbleweeds drifting across the floor as I stepped in just before showtime. Not much of an audience for Young Empires, a local trio that I had passingly heard some people being excited about. They turned out to not be so much of my thing, playing a hip-hop-ified sort of mersh electro-dance rock. The trio on stage (guit/laptop, keyb/vox, bass) managed to generate a lot of sound and fury in a seven song, half-hour set, but to me the songs all sounded like something you might hear over the end credits of a summer blockbuster. Of course, that probably means there's an audience for this, even if they have some clunky lyrics ("dancing in the dark/ gonna steal your heart") and combine the worst elements of stiff, lifeless laptop-based dance-pop with yelp-y quote-unquote "indie" vocals.
It was stupid hot in the room. Fans were on to move the air, but to minimal effect. In the empty space in front of the stage, three people head up to dance. The singer dumps a bottle of water on his head and splashes them with the remnants. I move back and find a place to sit. By the end, it was one of those situations where I was sitting there, winding myself up over how poorly this was sitting with me, so do read my remarks with that in mind. Even if I wasn't impressed, the band certainly did some win people over.
As Brooklyn's The Tony Castles get set up, I already felt a bit on their side. Kinda scruffy and road-worn, they look markedly less coiffed and calculated than their predecessors.1 As it would turn out, I suppose that could be an apt way to consider their sound: no less generic than Young Empires, probably, but closer to something that I dig, and as such a more enjoyable set. I suppose they also shared the fact that they were a trio who played a not-spare sound, with the guitarist doubling up on keys up front, and some drumpads augmenting the drummer's output. There were also some synthloops in the background of the songs.
Musically, there were some "Brooklyn" signifiers here — spiky guitar, yelpy vocals — and it was all vaguely pleasing but nothing special. I liked it more when they slowed down a bit for the 80's soul-chilled "Black Girls in Dresses", with a more relaxed vocal approach stretching up into falsetto. An interesting song that also sort of lost the plot midway through — but definitely showing potential. It was a fairly quick set, lasting just five songs. This passed the time in a more satisfying manner, but didn't leave a hugely strong impression.
Listen to a track from this set here.
That meant that the job of turning this into a memorable night would be left to headliners Fool's Gold. I was admittedly curious to see who would be the audience for this as the band's music cuts across different genres, which sometimes means that instead of gathering one poly-interested crowd, everyone has equal cause to stay away. For Fool's Gold, their genre-mixing isn't just an amalgam of "indie" and "African" — two broad-unto-meaningless descriptors that each include completely divergent kinds of music — so much as a wholehearted embrace of several different African genres. Which is to say that the indie crowd, to whom they're putatively being aimed at, might not dig them for doing more than grafting a hint of African-ness on top of something they recognize — a move that has had some big-time results lately. And at the same time, the world-music crowd (older, more affluent, oft hung-up on "authenticity") doesn't show up for shows like this.2
Anyways, for whatever reason, this was a pretty thinly-attended show. it's unusual at the El Mo to see seats for the taking along the long north wall in the break before the headiner's set, and once the band started, I counted maybe fifty people or so on hand. This didn't seem to matter much to the band. After a big group hug at the side of the stage, they came on and set the tone right away with leadoff track "Ha Dvash", which came in with an extended instrumental groove before the vocals — mostly in Hebrew — kicked in. That would be the template — long songs that could unfurl at length, each of them as much of a forum for co-founding lead guitarist Lewis Pesacov as for vocalist Top. There's a dozen musicians listed in the credits of their fine self-titled album, but the touring configuration was half that size — still a substantial enough force to tackle the music without sounding stripped down.
"Nadine" did get people standing and moving up to the front to groove along, and things were getting stronger from song to song. "Poseidon", climaxing with some tasty guitar work from Pesacov, had a spark to it that I didn't recall from its album incarnation. And the band was working hard to break through to the crowd that was on hand. Imploring the crowd to come closer, Top said, "we didn't come all this way not to see your faces." And after cajoling some folks to move up to the stage, he congratulated himself, "that's what you call Jewish guilt, ladies and gentlemen!"
The band then rewarded the crowd with "Surprise Hotel", their most immediately appealing song, exchanging the darker Ethio-inspired sounds underpinning some of the previous songs with a brightly skipping soukous rhythm, stretching out for over ten minutes. The extended length was all the more impressive in considering that the second half of the song sped up the tempo to the extent that the song was suddenly zooming by. Quite superb.
After that, it was more and more of a dance party. "Night Dancing" was stripped down to the point where for lots of the song it was just bass and drums and everyone else on percussion. Taking that to its logical conclusion, set-closer "The World is All There Is" ended with the band on the floor, all playing percussion save for the saxophone, the crowd gathered around in a circle for a big singalong, woah-oh's punctuated by shouts of "My friends!"
That would be hard to beat. The band returned for an encore that included a (new?) song that was an upbeat highlife-styled number before going out on the slowed-down Ethopian stomp of "Momentary Shelter".
For what had begun as an exploratory side project, Fool's Gold has taken a life of its own and gotten the band a lot of attention and a chance to tour around the world. Top reported towards the end that once the tour was done the band was going to get ready for their second album, so it looks like the band has some sticking power. Maybe next time around there will be a few more people to see them — this band has the potential to mix together some different crowds in what would be a really impressive way.
The band plays some different styles, so you can check out a couple different ones from this set here and here.
1 And yes, I know this is no less a "look" than the most straight-from-the fashion pages thing. I'm not fooled into thinking that it makes a band look "more real" to be in street clothes — it just falls more in line with my own slouchy stance, I guess.
2 So who were these people that did show up? It wasn't the usual indie crowd, as I didn't see anyone from my mental file of semi-familiar faces. They certainly weren't drawing from the world music crowd either, which is a shame. So who were all these people? Who were all these dudes in white t-shirts? They looked like their usual environment would be a dance club.
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