Photos By: Jeremy Ross

(3.9.2010) – The Clifford Balch art deco designed building stood before me with its bottled up nervous energy and sweeping curves.  The once single-screen movie theater that ran for 50 years has turned into a host spot for talented music acts of various genres.  But on this cold, windy Tuesday night in LA, the El Rey was (again) selling admission for only one screening: The Big Pink.

Before the feature…

The pre-warm up act, Active Child, played a nice, short and sweet set.  The catchy, soft, minimal beat driven “When Your Love Was Safe” was a standout.  Active Child creates music from a philosophy of keeping the beats minimal, sharp, and not overly meticulous in order to allow the high pitched, sweet vocals of Pat Grossi to shine.  A pleasant band that played for just about the right amount of time before annoyance could set in.  I expect to see good things from Grossi and his harp in the future.

When I first heard A Place to Bury Stranger a few years back, I instantly became a fan.  Not so much because they do anything wildly original, but because they remind me of a past I longed to be a part of: the nose driven, drug infused, hazy dream like barbed wire songs of the shoegaze 80’s/early 90’s.  The charm comes from the band’s sound harnessing the complete recklessness of Suicide mixed with the sweet, jagged pop guitar sounds of Psychocandy.  Full of stimulated slices of suspicion-industrial guitar noise and dying pop grain, the group plays loud and full of wild energy that has a certain ecstasy-like quality.

Back in ’07 when the debut came out, the joys of Strangers was about basking in the dissonance and emerging out with bucketsful of pleasurable sludge. But today, the band has eradicated some of the callous textures in favor of more polished, hook driven rock tunes; songs that use to haunt are now replaced with digestible, yet mediocre food that’s gravely (at times) uncomfortable.

On Tuesday night, Strangers didn’t so much hit on those blissful screeching guitar sounds, they just hit on the straight screech.  There’s a difference between blissful noise and just uncoordinated, chalkboard scratching noise (the later is what Place to Bury Strangers unfortunately sounded like).  If you could somehow bare the noise, the songs sounded like they’re really good, but everyone looked uncomfortable due to the sheer pressure of their eardrums.  If it weren’t for the “no in and out privileges”, I would’ve made a killing on ear plugs.

Still, this is no indication to rule out this band. They are most certainly still one of the best bands bringing shoegaze into the 21st century.  A Place to Bury Strangers might be best served with the volume knob close by.

This leads us to the feature presentation.  The Big Pink came rolling out with jagged, loud guitars and a cool, swagger to them.  This band knows they are one of the hottest pieces of UK ass around in the indie world and they don’t hide from this one bit.

The Big Pink is undoubtedly a sum of their influences: the raw energy of the Verve, the jangly rhythms of the Stone Roses, the sonic structure and landscape of Spacemen 3, the prog-rock overindulgence of the Catherine Wheel, and the drum loops and dance essentials of Chapterhouse… truthfully, when talking about The Big Pink, listing their influences might be the best way to describe them because they so blatantly take from all those groups.

What makes this band standout is the sheer fact that not only do they take from all of these influential bands style, but they combine all those elements to make something sound fresh, and similar without being too complicated at the same time.  This might be Pink’s greatest feat: to take these influences and not fuck it up into some jumble crap box.

Playing stuff from their 2009 hit record, “A Brief History of Love”, Robbie Furze comes wailing out with both guitar and vocals while fellow London mate, Milo Cordell, mixing hip sounding beats on the keyboard.  The band played their popular gems such as the hypnotic “Velvet” (an enormous sounding song that still sounds personal) and the uber-catchy “Dominoes”.

Another standout was “Too Young to Love” which dashes by on energy and thrust more than anything else.  The sweet build up of “Crystal Visions” to an all out sonic explosion was nirvana.  “At War with the Sun” feels like a nice, 80’s nostalgic pop/rock driven New Order ballad.  When played live, you can really hear that the song nicks Stone Roses’ jangle with more vicious distortion pedals, while “Frisk” feels more like a straight nod to Blur’s early funk days.

Tuesday night was a fine example of what good indie pop/rock music can do: make you have a fucking swell time.  Pink left it all out on the table and allowed us to hop on the wild ball of energy-ridden ride.  That all makes for a damn fun evening, but nothing really “wow-ed” me or had me saying “damn, I’m glad I saw these guys before they decay into shit.”  And maybe that’s my fault for putting too much pressure or building too high of a pedestal for a band to climb in order to actually make me really care.  But, with the Big Pink, I thoroughly enjoy their music and 10 years from now I can foresee me spinning one of their dance beat tracks of theirs to bring ironic nostalgia to my “Bring back the ‘09’s” hipster party; but I don’t think Pink will be anything that will hold up as truly inventive down the road.

Sometimes their sound comes together and it reminds you of those influences while still maintaining innovation.  Sometimes it sounds a bit outdated and copied.  Sometimes it’s a question of constraint and whether they use too much of their sonic tools at their disposal all at once.

Overall, The Big Pink is damn exciting and seem to be using their influences as a sheer launching pad for something bigger, stronger, and all their own.

Random notes:
-    Sticking with the movie theme, is it just me or does “The Big Pink” make you think dirty, B-horror 1940’s smut film with a small town being invaded by a large, vagina-like monster that looks more like a poorly constructed eye lid than anything else.

-    I think “A Brief History of Love” is equivalent to Catherine Wheel’s “Ferment.”  Here’s hoping for “Chrome.”  My gut feeling is, it goes carbon copy or backwards from here.

-    Harp’s are all the rave today, and for good reasons.  They’re pretty.  I said it.

-    The Big Pink have such a swagger to them.  Robbie reminds me of Blur’s Damon Albarn went through or what Jarvis Cocker goes through on a daily basis.

-    I couldn’t fucking believe me eyes when I saw hipsters actually dancing.