Last Aurora and Hollywood Heartthrob at Vinyl (Atlanta, 10/2)

Atlanta-based up-and-comers Last Aurora are a band with enough heart to fill a room much larger than the one they performed in at Vinyl on Saturday night.

Band photoshoot by Hilary Cadigan

Rocking their way through a short set of powerful tracks, the fervent foursome—including vocalist Robeen Dey, guitarist/synthmaster Alex Lafley, bassist Donnie Dey, and drummer Charlie Blevins—forged an instant connection with their small but equally feisty audience.

Frontman Robeen managed to come off lovably despite the bro-two punch of popped collar and Wayfarers-at-night, an impressive feat in and of itself, as he unabashedly Auto-Tuned his voice into a metallic wail that jutted against Lafley’s deft guitar work and Blevins' ferocious live percussion. Noted and appreciated: the drum kit's refreshing placement at the front left corner of the stage rather than hidden in the back as it usually [unfairly] is.

Last Aurora traverses rocky territory with the quick-footed resilience of a young band just starting to get comfortable in a newfound niche. Their sound ricochets between trance, rock, post-grunge, and whatever genre Chromeo is in, but finds cohesion in its consistently compelling delivery, particularly strong on tracks like “List of Men” and “Waiting a Long Time.” The result is a highly enjoyable wash of sound and light that draws you in, wraps you up, and makes you realize that being drenched in processed audio isn’t nearly as offensive as you thought it would be.  In fact, it rocks.

The offensive part of the evening didn’t come until a group of trust-funded ass clowns in tight pants and chemically straightened hair mounted the stage and punished us with a rain cloud of regurgitated pop-punk that pretty much summed up everything I dislike about music. And while I’m at it, I might as well finish my tirade by stating the fact that Hollywood Heartthrob (I know, right) bought all the tickets to their own show in order to tout it as sold-out. Boom. Outed. Cut to me throwing a glowstick at the frontman’s face and finishing my Bud Lite on the sidewalk.

Needless to say, Last Aurora should have been the last performance of the evening.

Download their EP at https://www.mavaru.com/artists/last-aurora/, a pay-what-you-want online music retailer created by Last Aurora’s own Alex Lafley!

Review and Photos by Hilary Cadigan

YACHT (The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta 3/16/10)

The brainchild of musician and multimedia performance artist Jona Bechtolt, YACHT prevails more as an experience than a band.  In fact, as their website’s official mission statement declares, YACHT is “a Band, a Belief System and a Business.”  In concert, it quickly becomes clear that performance, for YACHT, derives from art, but not in the annoying, pretentious, or esoteric sense. Think Banksy, light on the politics. While there remains something obviously tongue-in-cheek about the whole endeavor, Bechtolt clearly feels very passionate about what he has created, and wants nothing more than to share it. 

Backed by two-man opening act Bobby Birdman on bass and drums, YACHT’s performance struck gold with a combination of serious eccentricities, quirky exuberance, and faithful interpretation of 2009’s critically acclaimed See Mystery Lights, the first album to feature Claire Evans as an official band member.

As the other half of Team YACHT, Evans truly nails her role as Bechtolt’s female counterpart. Imagine if Karen O and Siouxsie Sioux somehow conceived a child that came out looking like Annie Lennox from Eurythmics.  With a blonde bob, ruby red lips, and skintight black dress, the heron-like Evans is a gothified diva who bounced around the stage like a curious puppy, tapping on everyone else’s instruments, tipping over microphone stands and tangling herself up in wires. 

Compared to their studio work, nearly everything YACHT played sounded better live, from the jaunty, rattling anthem “The Afterlife” to the T-Pain-spoofing  auto-tune of “I’m In Love with a Ripper.”  Evans breathed unprecedented life into “It’s Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want,” a double-track that felt a little, well, boring in its 9-minute studio cut.  In addition, Bechtolt led a rollicking, electrified cover of L.A. band X’s garage-punk oldie “Nausea.”

Then there was near-flawless feel-good masterpiece “Psychic City,” the buoyant and bubbling little gem that proffers the delightful idea of a “voodoo city/where every little thing has its own secret life.” I must mention that this is one of my personal favorite songs—which is probably the only reason I noticed that Evans messed up the lyrics of the first verse—but other than that I was very pleased with the performance. They got all the “HUH!”s just right.

Never even needing to look at each other, the chemistry between Bechtolt and Evans thrives on the power of minimalism.  The two are clearly on the same wavelength, shining in small moments of almost familial synchronicity, such as their pokerfaced Macarena entrance, performed to the twittering pulsations of “Ring the Bell,” which provocatively chants “Will we go to heaven/Or will we go to hell/It’s my understanding/That neither are real” before dissolving into Three 6 Mafia-esque stutter effects. With Bechtolt in a white suit and white sneakers and Evans in head-to-toe black, a kind of yin/yang duality comes into play: together, they form a perfectly balanced whole and prove that on YACHT’s stage, there is room for two divas.

Unafraid to ham it up or break into spastic little dances, Bechtolt kept the energy high throughout the performance, basking in various forms of audience interaction.  There was a Q&A session, introduced with the promise, “We’ll answer anything!” (Q: “Why are you awesome?” A: “Why am I a mirror reflecting your awesomeness?”), and even a “guided meditation” in which he came down into the crowd on bended knee; “the world may end in my lifetime but my energy will continue,” Bechtolt intoned, “I will love. I will not attack.”

As the band’s website proclaims, “All people are welcome to become members of YACHT.  Accordingly YACHT is and always will be what YACHT is when YACHT is standing before you.”  So what is YACHT when YACHT is standing before you?  To put it simply: a damn good time.

Review by Hilary Cadigan