Magic Kids Play to a Packed House at The Mercury Lounge

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The Mercury Lounge is a cozy little venue situated close to the crossroads of the two hippest streets in Manhattan, Houston and Bowery. Weekend nights this area is bursting with club-goers, bar-hoppers, couples getting shawarma at Bereket Turkish Kebabs and packs of twenty-somethings getting midnight snacks from Katz Delicatessen. An equally hopping crowd could be found packing the The Mercury Lounge for Friday’s eclectic show featuring Bosco Delrey and Magic Kids.




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The show opened with Big Troubles, a psychedelic/shoegaze band that sticks close to the tried-and-true psychedelic formula of hazy distortion, distant vocals, and sparkling clean drums. There’s power in this mix, and each chord seemed to shake the small stage room and go straight to the bones. The early crowd was small but appreciative, and Big Troubles’s set was short and sweet.

Calvin_LeCompte_aka_Brianne

Afterwards Brianne, aka Calvin LeCompte of Tough Knuckles, played an even shorter set, a one man band with a guitar and a drum machine. His music was quirky and fun, and he has a strong, confident voice. His beats were well crafted, usually sparse with the occasional well-placed burst of noise.  Between each song, however, he was a completely different person. He was either very nervous or eccentric to an extreme, and he spent a lot of time telling half-formed jokes, mumbling sentences, and generally acting strange. The weirdness between songs, unfortunately, is the most memorable part of his set.

Bosco Delrey took the stage next. To be honest, his set was what I really came to see. I’d heard some tunes on his MySpace page, and I’d become hooked on his unique amalgamation of Hip Hop, Electric Blues, Synth Rock, with more than a pinch of Elvis and Classic Punk thrown in. Live, he cranks up the volume on his sampler, letting his primal, infectious beats boom through the crowd as he plays blues-drenched riffs and sings his funky heart out. He lets one song bleed into another, playing off the noise of two sets of pre-recorded material colliding.

For some reason, Delrey insisted on turning the stage lights as low as possible. In the dimness, I could barely make him out as he strutted, pranced and swung his guitar over his head. It looked like it was a great show, and I wish I could have seen it. Delrey’s setlist was wonderfully chaotic, full of genre-bending mutts of songs, but the odd choice of lighting made them harder to appreciate.

In recordings, Magic Kids sound so much like a contemporary version of The Beach Boys you’d think the band was a front created by Brian Wilson in order to relive the glory days. Their brand of pop, like that of the Beach Boys, is innocently happy and forever young. Vocalist Bennett Foster croons about girls, breakups, and summertime affairs with tight back-up vocals, square guitar strumming, and the occasional bouncy synth melody. The lush, romantic orchestration of their recorded sound is its greatest strength.

Live, they show a lot more individuality. Drummer Ben Bauermeister plays with a super-heavy sound, and guitarist Alex Gates isn’t afraid to lay on the distortion for added weight. This extra bit of umph propels Magic Kids’s sound forward. They were the tightest and technically best band at the Mercury Lounge, and a real pleasure to hear.

The best song of the night was “Day at the Shrine,” performed by Magic Kids and written by an earlier incarnation of the band, The Barbaras. It has a harder, garage rock edge, but retains a candy-coated veneer. You can hear it on The Barbara’s still-existent MySpace page.

Magic Kids and Bosco Delray are touring their way south to Memphis next week, while Big Troubles is heading to upstate New York for a few more shows. If you’re around either area, go check them out.  Despite weird choices by some of the performers, I was very happy I did.