Headlights/Evangelicals @ Iota Club
With the (unfulfilled) prospect of a snow day no doubt dancing in many a head last night, DCist ventured down to Clarendon to catch two up-and-coming groups, Headlights and Evangelicals, at the Iota Club and Cafe.
It was well worth the trip. Local Death Cab for Cutie acolytes We Were Pirates opened things up, and while there was occasionally something hummable, the bare-bones trio arrangements offered little variety save for a plucked bass solo on the band's last tune. Luckily, Headlights proved the perfect remedy, revealing their intentions right off the bat with a slow-burning "Get Your Head Around It" that began with an atmospheric synth and a slow, jangled guitar melody but ending with pounded rolling snare and triumphant ba-ba group vocals. Here was a group proud to show off their polish and finding new ways to arrange your standard guitars-bass-keys-drums to dress up their solid, but unspectacular songs into something quite exhilirating. The band continually gained momentum, and the second half of the set ("So Much For the Afternoon") — heavy with bobbing bass lines reminiscent of Booker T. and the MGs via more recent indie touchstones like Saturday Looks Good to Me — featured a band locked in and firing on all cylinders, their driving pop coated in a nice haze of effects pedals and feedback.
They saved their best for last though. "Cherry Tulips" — the single off their strong new release Some Racing, Some Stopping -- was much more rousing than on record, reminding of the Rosebuds but with a wonderful guitar outro, heavy with reverb. Like the wistful "On April 2" earlier in the set, it provided just enough tempo change from the otherwise bouncy setlist to demonstrate that Headlights possess a self-awareness not so common in your average blogworthy indie pop group.
Where Headlights were loud and atmospheric but precise in their approach to indie pop, Oklahomans Evangelicals presented a different proposition. With instruments and amps covered in glowpaint and lit by blacklight from below, the band made no bones about its lo-fi, spooky psych vibe. And after an unsteady opening with lead singer Josh Jones noodling around the stage a la Jim Morrison, they too found their groove and made their musical intentions clear. From then on out, it was like pure psychedelia, streamlined, cutting out all the whimsy and meandering to reveal noise-damaged riffs and shouted vocals so drenched in reverb and echo the audience was practically swimming. It was catchy in the way that mid-period Flaming Lips (think "Kim's Watermelon Gun") or early, early Ween (think "Common Bitch") were catchy: just enough melody to keep you interested, with enough tempo changes and inventive structures to make you wonder what was coming next. Even a power outage midset that left only one vocal mic working couldn't quite halt the momentum; lead singer Josh Jones came on and did a decent little acoustic number, "Snowflake", to pass the time.
And much like Headlights, the band's closing sequence of songs was best. The multifaceted "Another Day" featured strobe lights matched the pulsing guitar squalls between off-kilter verses, but the band wisely stuck the brand new "Skeleton Man" to close out the night. Cleary the lead single on their latest, The Evening Descends, it comes across like a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — with production value. You could likewise point to a host of other bands Evangelicals might be swiping from, but when the band got to the song's final section, it was hard not to be firmly in the moment, absorbed by Jones's screams of "Someone loves you very much" and a wall of cascading guitar.
Picture from Headlights website.