Part Time Punks II: Love Is All is worth the buzz

Kevin Bronson on November 17th, 2008

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Can’t remember being at a show with this kind of cross-generational energy. OK, I’m sure moms danced with daughters at Madge’s big show, and dads and sons bonded in front of whatever classic rock act was overcharging for its tickets. But there was something different about Part Time Punks, and maybe it was that the music’s often icy detachment made for a different kind of communal experience.

Young heads bobbed to older musicians. Old heads bobbed to younger musicians. Occasionally all heads stared straight down and all you saw were bouncing domes.

Three of the buzziest next-next-generation groups thrashed out sets that had everyone in motion — the Muslims, Vivian Girls and Love Is All — even if I felt at times their efficacy owed primarily to the contagious nature of the festival.

The Muslims [right] are going to be hard to avoid. They’ve relocated to L.A. from San Diego; they have some muscle behind them (they opened for the Last Shadow Puppets a couple weeks ago, and they open for the Breeders tonight at the Wiltern); and they cultivate a powerful churn that, while not terribly distinctive, gets bodies moving. And frontman Matt Lamkin’s voice cuts through it all, even if it rather paled in comparison to Magic Bullets frontman Philip Benson’s Morrissey-meets-Sinatra croon.

Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls [left] play fuzzy low-fi punk the likes of which …” well, we have seen before. The all-female trio kept their 45-minute set fresh and energetic enough that it won over a lot of hearts and ears. (They will be back in L.A. on Tuesday, performing with Love Is All at the Smell.)

Love Is All [pictured at top] played like the next-big-thing the Swedish quintet is made out to be — a yelpy, cacophonous convulsion of youthful frustration. Josephine Olausson juggled vocals and keyboards with aplomb, and the band’s rapid-fire percussion and time changes made for an exhilarating 45 minutes. Catch ’em now.

Prior to those three acts, I caught parts of Warpaint [below], whose almost-tribal atmospherics would have been perfect with a side order of ‘shrooms, and Grimble Grumble [bottom], whose dark, ferocious shoegazer take on post-punk was perhaps a bit out of place amid all the crooked riffage but was nonetheless potent stuff.