Santos Party House – New York, NY
Live Review: 4/16/09
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First thing about the Morning After Girls: they’re not girls, not even close, like the New York Dolls or Gaspard Ulliel (in a good way; Google it). No, they’re five guys in proper shirts and slacks. Fronted by guitarists Sacha Lucashenko and Martin B. Sleeman, who relocated from Melbourne to New York last year, The Morning After Girls play pretty, narcotized psychedelic rock, dripping in reverb and introspection, which has earned them comparisons to bands like Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine.

The Morning After Girls—who recently released an EP, “The General Public”—do well by the shoegaze resurgence with impeccably delivered vocal harmonies, which, both on record and during their live set, creates a beautiful, textured sound. Maybe that musical complexity is attributable to Sleeman’s own sophisticated playlist: “Music? I don’t tend to listen to much music. If anything, it would be classical music; Chopin, Rachmaninov, Haydin,” he recently told pluginmusic.com.

Not all their songs are subdued—the setlist included some upbeat pop numbers—but most induced a sleepy, hypnotic trance that was broken only when dance music mysteriously started to blast from the DJ booth (due to a technical glitch or phantom disc jockey). The show was pleasant, if not somewhat sedating. But, then again, they’re not called The Dancing Sexy In Front of Stage Left Girls.

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myspace.com/themorningaftergirls

via Lydia Fong, 4 May 2009 2:39am | |