Thumbing through my Twitter feed Thursday night before heading over to The Bishop, one of Bloomington's finest music venues, I did a double take when I read Spirit of '68s tweet: "Due to a delay in Nashville, DOM will not be playing The Bishop tonight."
"Uh...what?" I thought to myself. I was pumped to find out what the buzz surrounding the Worcester, MA indie pop-rock group who was supposed to headline was all about. Now what?
But show business is show business and the show must go on. It did, and luckily Santa Barbara's Gardens & Villa (VEE-yah) was also on the bill. Once they jumped on stage I forgot all about DOM and their inexplicable absence.
Bloomington's Qur'an Qur'an opened up the show. The band's heart is most certainly in the right place and their soulful sound, which reminds of mix between tUne-yArDs and Maps & Atlases, is very interesting. But the band needs to add a bass player to the two guitars, drum lineup and develop technically before they can do justice to the solid strong structures they already employ.
I'm not normally one for dreamy, snythy indie pop, but there is an undeniable charm to the ambient, dark beachy melodies emitting from the instruments of the five college friends comprising Gardens & Villa. Not to mention, it's hard not to like a band whose frontman has a satchel of flutes strung around his back and occasionally breaks one out for an Eastern European style solo.
Their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, released on Bloomington's Secretly Canadian in early July, comprised most of their set. Impressively, they played every strange electronic sound on the album live by using an array of electronic drum pads and synths.
The band was at their best when driving the beat, toning down a bit on their '80s new wave grooves and adding a little more soul and rock to their songs. "Cruise Ship" and "Spacetime" alluded to their '60s rock influences and stuck out as two of the night's best.
"Neon Dove," the album closer, was by far and away the most impressive musical effort of the evening. As the song built into an instrumental jam, lead singer Chris Lynch put down a foot stomping flute solo while auxiliary percussionist and synth player Dustin Ineman played an opened palmed congo drum beat on an electronic drum pad. Can't say I've seen that before.
There was no detailed explanation of what held up DOM from making it to Bloomington, but after Gardens & Villa finished their set with a remarkably energetic version of Gary Numan's "Cars," I don't think that many people in attendance were too worried about it.
Post and photography by Daniel Brown
