[Review] Washed Out, ANR, Soft Powers @ Drunken Unicorn (2/10/11)

Tired of this cold weather, I had been reminiscing about spending last summer by the pool listening to a lot of chillwave. So between that and watching the opening sequence of Portlandia for the past few weeks, I was pretty stoked to catch this show. Unfortunately as of late, I’ve been disappointed with every concert that I had high expectations for, and this was no exception.

I got there nice and early to catch Soft Powers, whose recorded material I really enjoy. If I’m not mistaken, this live incarnation of Soft Powers featured a couple of members of the Four4 Collective bringing up the rhythm section, and it definitely felt like the band lacked cohesiveness and obviously had a lot of miscommunications with each other during their set. They opened with two songs from Bad Pop, played sloppily at a slow tempo. Then they performed a lot of stuff I didn’t recognize that was more rock based, and rock doesn’t seem to suit these guys as well as their more glo-fi material. The entire set just screamed of amateur hour, but these kids are young and still have plenty of time to improve their live show.

After that, Clint and I headed to Cameli’s to grab some slices and endure some bad karaoke before returning halfway through ANR‘s set. They definitely possessed some musical talent, but their actual music wasn’t doing it for me. Although they closed with a great cover of Sonic Youth‘s “Schizophrenia.” It’s a bad sign for a show, though, when the best moment of the night was a cover.

We waited in the packed out crowd for Washed Out to set up while Clint made entertaining comments like “How long does it take to tune a Powerbook?” Washed Out then played a fairly short set followed by an encore of his best songs. The Washed Out live show featured some traditional-type band members around Ernest Greene, and the stage presence gained came at the detriment of the music. I understand that it’s difficult to get this sort of music to translate well to a live setting (I’ve heard that he never intended to perform this music live when he wrote it in the first place), but I would have preferred the “Girl Talk dance around a CD player method” to having a live band suck out everything appealing about the songs. For instance, they played some really weak reggae jam that didn’t sound anything like Washed Out‘s studio stuff . Also, Greene didn’t seem to have any effects on his vocals like on the record, and without the effects, he isn’t that great of a singer. Even the version of the hit “Feel It All Around” they closed with didn’t sound that good.

Maybe chillwave just doesn’t work in a live setting, or maybe these guys lack the experience necessary to be a good performer. But either way, it was a disappointing concert.

[Photos] Soft Powers, Beau Victrola, A. Grimes @ Eyedrum (12/26/10)

A. Grimes:




Beau Victrola:




Soft Powers:

[Mp3] Soft Powers: “Bo The Magical Car”

I completely forgot that Soft Powers was playing Noni’s tonight with Carnivores, Red Sea, and Moodrings, so if you catch this post in time, seems like a chill Monday night activity. Soft Powers just dropped another bandcamp hit last week, so here it is:

Soft Powers : “Bo The Magical Car”

Soft Powers myspace

[Mp3] Soft Powers: “Moon Culture”

Washed Out may have trouble keeping his crown as Georgia’s king of chillwave with the arrival of Suwanee’s Soft Powers. Just days after including a Soft Powers song in my latest mixtape, Altered Zones followed my lead and posted up a super chiller. Here’s another summery track that was bouncing around the series of tubes, and Soft Powers performs live at WonderRoot this Friday night on a stacked lineup which includes Little Tybee, White Light Forest Choir, and Free Ticket:

Soft Powers : “Moon Culture”

Soft Power bandcamp

Ohmpark Mixtape #16: One Last Summer Mix


Photos by Adrienne Claire Darnell


Living Rooms : “Cave In”
Still Corners : “Endless Summer”
Teen Daze : “Neon”
Keep Shelly In Athens : “A Tear In My I”
Deerhunter : “Revival”
Miniature Tigers : “Tropical Birds”
Soft Powers : “Just Like Tropica-L”
Tennis : “Baltimore”
Wild Nothing : “Summer Holiday”
Miracle : “Sunstar”
Oneohtrix Point Never : “Stress Waves”
Autolux : “Transit Transit”