"This confusion is very hard to orchestrate. We're still working it out ... we're working on being more confused."
So spoke Alex Ebert, the hiply hippie frontman of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, during his band's flowery, feel-good set last night at the Varsity Theater. The show was sold out far in advance and featured another hype-building ensemble from L.A., Fools Gold.
Truth is, I liked everything about ES&MZ except for Ebert, dressed all in a white suit and coming off visually like a dreadlocked Wayne Coyne. His between-song banter came off as purposefully spacey and trite. After the third song "Carries On," for instance, he dramatically told the crowd, "I almost lost my breath back here. I was crying. Now, I'm going to take off my shoes." Also, I thought Ebert isn't nearly as good a singer as he pretends to be. It was as if he tried to sound like a white soul singer and/or Bowie but instead reminded me alternately of Neil Diamond or Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin (two guys who I'd call overly showy vocalists).
However, the nine-member band overall -- augmented with two local string players to make it 11 -- was quite a rousing, sunny-vibe psychedelic ensemble, especially when it delivered the big, hair-raising, Polyphonic Spree/Arcade Fire-style choruses of songs such as "Janglin'" and "Carries On." Booming-voiced co-vocalist Jade Castrinos was the dark horse of the band, and in fact I thought the one song she sang lead on toward the end was the highlight of the set (a song not on the record, so I don't know the title). The mostly college-age crowd was about half-and-half filled with people who absolutely adored the band and sang nearly every word, and half with hanger-ons who started straggling out of the theater after "40 Day Dream" was delivered four songs into the set. They missed out on some of the better songs of the night, but they also pretty much got the idea.
For a band hellbent on bringing jam-oriented Afropop to indie-rock crowds, Fools Gold sure didn't play very long. Only about a half-hour. The crowd wasn't much into them anyway, but that was proof the band really isn't the next Vampire Weekend but something different and more daring. Songs like the Talking Heads/Sun-Ra-backed "Surprise Hotel" and the opener "Nadine" had the same buoyancy they have on record, and the grooves were even more lively on stage. I hope to catch these guys again somewhere outdoors, and with a longer set time.
