Kevin Bronson on October 5th, 2012

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Filter magazine’s Culture Collide festival kicked off in earnest Thursday night in Echo Park, offering a sampler platter of international flavors that – musically, anyway – tasted generally pretty familiar. To that end, we offer something we’ll call Random Encounters of the Festival Kind:

Highlight of the night

“I never thought L.A. wasn’t big enough to have a 2-piece,” joked Blood Red Shoes drummer Steven Ansell. The U.K. duo, which also consists of hard-rocking guitar-sprite Laura-Mary Carter, played so hard the power went out in the Champagne Room at Taix. It was the most punk thing to happen all night, and even with the few minutes of dead air while the sound guy scrambled to get the power back on (not the first time that would happen), Blood Red Shoes brought the banquet room to a delirious fever. Ansell and Carter pummeled their way through frenetic punk-blues songs like “Don’t Ask” and “Heartsick,” leaving the audience to roar with approval when their set ended with a loud crash of drums and wailing guitar.

Dean & Britta, and other culture collisions

Dean & Britta (Wareham and Phillips, respectively, plus their rather good drummer Anthony LaMarca) performed roughly an hour of Galaxie 500 songs at Echo Park United Methodist Church. Wareham appeared damn near jovial as the trio expertly navigated a set that included favorites like “Flowers,” “Tugboat,” “Fourth of July,” and their distinctive covers of Jonathan Richman’s “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste,” and New Order’s “Ceremony.” Thus making that whole heaven concept immediately easier to grasp.

• ||| Photos by Carl Pocket

The late sets over at the Echo were astral in an opposite way. Locals American Royalty brought an energy that under normal circumstances would be hard to follow, but Spanish producer/DJ John Talabot and Pional certainly had no problem. The sound, and the crowd, seemed to double almost inexplicably. Most of the show was a sea of  bobbing heads, but when the beautiful and haunting “So Will Be Now” dropped, not a single person was stationary.

And the final set at the Champagne Room also suffered an outage. Tribes brought their yell-along, dirty, Nirvana-’n’-roll to the room and while they may not have outstripped Blood Red Shoes, they did exhaust the amps. Said singer-guitarist Johnny Lloyd: “Anytime we are in California things break.” After unplugging all the instruments and taking a five-minute break, the show went on.

Many of Culture Collide’s early sets were more eclectic. At Taix, Sweden’s Immanu El, with their sailing-on-the-ocean visuals, dispensed ambient anthems for cold winters, leaning toward the weepy side of Britpop, crooning sweetly about how everything would be better “if you stay with me.” In a less chatty room, it could have been transportative. Local axeman Jared James Nichols brought his dyed-in-the-wool power trio to the Champagne Room with a roar. His songwriting has not yet caught up to his prodigious guitar skills, but Nichols did succeed in shredding himself out of his wristband by the second song. And do you know how hard those damn things are to get off?

More of a puzzle was Touchy Mob, aka Ludwig Plath, performing solo in the Taix Lounge. His minimalist approach – falsetto vocals, off-kilter guitars, backing tracks – was sabotaged by some sound problems, and Plath did not look like he was having any fun at all. Which can be contagious.

Over at the Church, it was dulcet tones all around from Norway’s Marit Larsen. Sweet vocals, bright piano arpeggios and warm guitar strumming made Larsen’s set just pure enough to make those pews seem comfortable. Her introduction to her finale “If a Song Could Get Me You” was even darling: “I put ‘radio’ in the chorus and it became my first No. 1 on the radio!” It was a gorgeous lead-in to the lush psych-pop of locals Drug Cabin, as Nathan Thelen was at the top of his game.

Back at Taix’s Champagne Room, local trio Of Verona got a Canadian billing, owing to singer Mandi Perkins’ Toronto upbringing. The band’s queen-of-the-disco rock peaked with the single “Castles,” with the UC Berkeley-educated songstress exuding just the right degree of dance-floor sexuality. Gear woes dampened things a little, but the material from the band’s very deep album “The White Apple” kept the near-capacity crowd on its toes.

On the other hand, everyone was flat-footed and restless in the Taix lounge during Coldair, a Polish entry whose unremarkable guitarscapes got lost in the conversations.

You could hardly have been forgiven for doing a double-take later in the lounge. When two very white British guys front a band, it’s easy to think frontman Matt Smith was joking when he says “We’re from Thailand.” Yet it’s true. The Standards are a British-Thai band with only three members who actually look Thai, but it was the most energetic set Taix’s front lounge saw all night.

Nashville’s Colorfeels followed with another pleasant surprise. The sextet crammed themselves onto the small stage and offered up rich harmonies and textured melodies via guitar, double percussion, triangle, saxophone, flute, oboe and keys. A beautiful way to end the first evening of Culture Collide.

Postscript

Though not technically part of the festival, L.A. quartet the World Record celebrated the release of their double-LP “Freeway Special” at the Echoplex – the show was free and attracted several with Culture Collide wristbands. Andy Creighton and crew (which included assists from a horn section and the Damselles) did not disappoint, ending a great set with the big sing-along, “We’re #1.”

Tonight’s Culture Collide schedule

Update: Dutch band Go Back to the Zoo has had to cancel its festival performances due to illness.

Contributing: Kevin Bronson, Seraphina Lotkhamnga, Joe Giuliano, Marion Hodges.