Regretfully I must attribute my inability to connect during the Mates of State show to my own personal shortcomings. It could not have been the atmosphere: love, no doubt, was in the air. One expects nothing less from the husband and wife duo who played a double show at the Independent in San Francisco on April 20th and 21st, sharing headlining duties with Jacksonville rockers Black Kids.
The unique coupling of modern and outmoded electronic instruments is the heart of Simian Mobile Disco’s sound, and subsequently their live set up. The spread gives the duo a flexibility to maneuver onstage between digital and analog sound production: a flexibility they explored with curious fervency at the Mezzanine in San Francisco on Sunday Night.
The Walkman: a black, square portable music player, a relic to a bygone age of music. The Walkmen: intangible, genre splicing rockers, behaving somewhat like relics. Fashionably speaking, most of the band dresses in 50’s lounge attire, favoring pinstripes and tanned vests. Their instruments are of a similar aged quality, looking like something one might find at a museum. The exception is bandleader Hamilton Leithasuer. If the rest of the band is a nod to the bygone era of the New York music scene, Hamilton is an emblem of its current manifestation: black, form fitting jacket; mousy, unkempt hair; a Fender Stratocaster, hung like a quiver, and played when, and if, he feels like it.
