Unfortunately I am writing this review like 17 days after the fact so my memory is less connected than one would hope. Compounding this is the fact that I had never heard any of the performers from this show before or since that night before writing this so my descriptions of their respective sounds is a bit shallow. That said, it was a real good night and I really enjoyed all 3 of the bands. This is, however, a really poorly-written review.
I went up to this show, put on by the homies at Acrobatics Everyday, with my good friends Mark Sarah Jason and Kevin from Temecula. We listened to Death By Stereo and Fifteen on the way up, me and Mark reminiscing about the good old days of 7th and 8th grade. Upon getting to Irvine, we stopped by the Albertsons near UCI to get cold beers for in between bands and Jason bought a package of Keibler elves cookie sandwiches that he proceeded to kill pretty much by himself as the night went on. We got a good legal parking spot off Stanford and walked onto campus from the crossing light next to Jack In The Box.
This was the first time any of them besides Jason had ever been on a university campus and I wanted to make UCI seem dope so as we were walking past various buildings I would talk about what they were and key experiences of mine in them. All dorky like. I led them past the social science trailers where Acrobatics used to have a lot of their shows and into the park where we walked towards the Cross Cultural Center to pay and see how far in the show was. When we arrived I paid and asked who was playing; it turned out to be Support Force, from Portland, whose demo I got from the singer guy afterwards was pretty good but at the time sounded a tad noisy and we all wanted to drink our beers so we walked back into the park to drink instead of watching that first set.
We meandered around Aldrich Park for maybe half an hour drinking our beers and everyone else but me finished everything they had bought. So for the rest of the night when I had another beer to crack open in between sets Mark would pester me to give him one, although I had planned out exactly how man y would be good for just me and he could have easily done the same. I eventually gave him one but come on bro plan ahead.
We went in for the second band, who happens to be from my hometown of Murrieta (I claim Murrieta and Temecula both as hometown because come on its all one borg). They’re called Trudgers, and I had missed them perform one time before at this venue with Little Teeth, the first time that Jason came to an Acrobatics Everyday show with me. I was excited to hear what they were gonna sound like because I really didn’t know what kind of music they played, although I wasn’t miles off in my expectation. The best way I would somewhat ambiguously describe them is tense yet airy; the music is strikingly emotional and somewhere dark yet pretty and it all has a very full sound. Something that I appreciate is that they have cool guitars; the singer Brent is more of an anchor and plays a lot of full chords as opposed to the pluckery many indie rock guitarists become slave to, while the other guitarist does a lot of more atmospheric feedback/noise/harmonics type stuff that layers for a very shadowy sound. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them throughout their set, they were my favorite band of the night and they appeared to have a good deal on their merch ($20 for 5 releases I think) but I didn’t have any money left after Albertson’s.
In between bands we hung out on a cafeteria-style table, the kind that have all the holes in the plastic that kids would tie other kids’s backpack straps into during lunchtime (Mark fondly recalled), and talked about music and stuff. Going to the bathroom right after Trudgers ended I ran into a girl who recognized me but for the damn life of me I can’t really remember. But she says she was an ex-girlfriend of another friend of mine and when I asked my friends upon returning to our table they seemed to remember. It was a bit odd and I felt bad that I for real didn’t remember and she could tell even as I tried to act like my memory was maybe coming back. Not so good.
The second band to perform was called Heavy Hawaii and I guess they’re from San Diego. They were alright but I just feel like I’ve seen their thing too many times before. They play like open, pretty kind of predictable indie rock with a lot of reverb on everything it seems, and the stuff is upbeat and cool and everything I just don’t know what it was that didn’t catch me. For one thing they had the kind of singer who is this skinny guy who’s acting self-consciously jumpy and stoked like Michael Stipe trying to be Andrew WK. His vocals were so covered in unnecessary reverb and noisy echo that I couldn’t tell if his lyrics sucked or if he couldn’t sing or what but it just wasn’t my thing. Totally post-Wavves. That all being said, I didn’t completely dislike them and I think both Mark and Sarah said that they were their favorite band of the evening. So there you go.
The final band we saw that night was called Dom, and they were on tour from Massachusetts. They played a well-honed type of garage rock with a good steady energy and well-lengthed songs, which is always important to me. Unfortunately, like I said I can’t exactly remember too much about them besides the fact that I enjoyed them a lot. The song that particularly stuck out was called “Damn,” which I found out by asking the bassist and he told me it was as then unreleased. But more than their originals were their covers. I heard them discussing what song to do next and I think the drummer said “Polaris” which struck my interest. The singer then said that they were gonna do one from their childhood and I knew I was in for gold. For those who don’t know, Polaris is the name of the band that did the soundtrack for the 90s kids show “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” which will always be one of the best shows for me. Dom busted into the show’s theme song, called “Hey Sandy” and I immediately lost my shit. I jumped merrily in the front of the crowd just fuckin rocking out and I could see there was a little tiny push-pit behind me as well. Cool stuff. You wouldn’t think a cover of “Hey Sandy” could be topped, and I think it was more matched than topped really, but the ending cover was just a really nice cherry on the top of the show. They covered fucking “Little Red Corvette.” They really got their groove on for this one and the singer’s voice actually was somewhat well suited for the high-pitched nature of the song without being disgraceful. I got really stoked on this one too and it closed out the night real nice.
There was another band called Religious Girls that was going to perform another set at a different location on campus, but it was already late enough that we kind of wanted to get on the road back to Temecula plus they said there would be like a 40 minute wait, so I said goodbye to the Acrobatics kids and we were off.
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