The White Rabbits shot their “Percussion Gun” right in the face of an Orlando audience at The Social on Friday, the 9th of April. From what I gathered, the turnout for this show was smaller than their last cramped appearance, but the crowd here was dedicated Rabbit fans and not just indie buzz seekers. Here We Go Magic opened the show and I was surprised by the last third of their performance. It took on a bigger, more experimental shoegaze feel than the indie pop of the first portion.
White Rabbits charged through a set evenly peppered with material from Fort Nightly and It’s Frightening. The crowd fed off the energy of their percussive drive with attention on multi-percussionist Matt Clark. The rest of the band showed their diversity as they traded instruments throughout the show. They saved heavy ammo for the exit, hitting the crowd with “The Plot” and “While We Go Dancing” toward the end and closed with “Lioness” and “Percussion Gun.” It was a decent show, although it didn’t live up to the “oh my god, they are so good live hype.” I’d give it a “meh” on the awesome scale.
“The Plot”
“Percussion Gun”
The little college town of Athens, Georgia has a rich and varied history of progressive rock music – from The B-52′s and R.E.M to the musical collective responsible for the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel and Elf Power. Danger Mouse is also an Athens transplant who began his stellar career in the humble little city. This rock pedigree is alive and well in Athens natives The Whigs.
I went to this show at the urging of a good friend in San Francisco – “Oh-mi-God, you will love this band. They are sooo good and you will totally walk out of the show with a crush on their singer, Yukimi Nagano.” She was right. They are from Sweden (though Yukimi speaks fluent, accent-free English) and they put on a hell of a show. Despite having around 70 people show-up, the music, the performance, the attendee’s good spirits, and more importantly, Nagano’s charm, exuberance, powerful voice, and Karen-O-ish antics made it feel like 250 people were there. They ran through an hour and 20 minutes worth of their future-indie-electro-proto-soul (I just made that up) with energy and charisma. It is like Morcheeba meets the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, then swallows Sade. They started quiet and worked the crowd into a frenzy. Part of this was due to the audience – we made Orlando look good. The scant few that showed up were grateful that LD was here. The crowd chanted, clapped in time, and even danced (poorly) on stage. The awkward smiles on the band’s faces showed they were giddy with the overwhelming response from our city.
What happened to the days when metal shows played late into the night? Maybe they still exist, just not when Firestone has a hip-hop club night to host. I was excited to hear Prong do classics like “Prove You Wrong” and “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” live as I missed them the first time around when I was 15 years old. No go. The doors opened at 6 (6!) despite their website’s proclamation of 8 PM. Alas, no Prong for me, but following a brief hassle at the door I was able to check out the end of Soulfly’s crushing set. Max’s classic “demon-choke” voice was grizzled and mean standing strong in front of a wall of guitar. Energy levels were high as they chugged through a grab bag of Soulfly and Sepultura’s greatest hits including “Babylon” and “Roots Bloody Roots” As I was held up at the door, I swore I could hear Slayer’s “Angel of Death.” Had I known it was going to be a classic thrash bonanza like this I would have been the first in line. One of the highlights of the show was the¬†
