Kevin Bronson on February 28th, 2015

0

White Arrows are a band trapped between medium and message.

The L.A. quartet’s sophomore album “In Bardo,” released last September, carries more intellectual heft than the next three psych-pop records you can name — sex, religion and death are the topics on the table, all addressed with varying degrees of aplomb. Live, however, much of thematic material is lost in translation, with singer-guitarist Mickey Schiff and mates Andrew Naeve, John Paul Caballero and Jake Nielsen settling a feel-good opaqueness.

On Friday night at the Roxy Theatre — amid polychromatic projections, billowing smoke, thrumming backing tracks and mostly buried vocals — White Arrows turned that more superficial connection into a fine party, if only that. In fact, it was even more fun if you saw the humor in drunk people on the Sunset Strip dancing to the songs “God Alert, Parts 1 and 2.”

The galloping anthem “We Can’t Ever Die” proved exemplary of the power White Arrows can wield. On one level, it’s an MGMT-styled rallying cry that appears to thumb its nose at mortality. Its deeper meaning is revealed in the second line of the chorus — “we are energy” — an articulation of the Buddhist belief that no energy is ever lost but merely changes form. And since human beings are composed of energy … well, you get it, reincarnationists. Think about that when you’re smoking a spliff listening to Schiff.

Schiff was mentored at NYU by a man who, among other exploits, practices shamanistic ritual. He has said that in the months he spent wrestling with self-doubt and writing the songs for “In Bardo” — “bardo” is a Tibetan word for the transitional state between life and death — his studies and life experiences commingled. So in the layers and layers of reverb White Arrows employs, there’s more than meets the ear.

The Roxy show (a makeup for a date White Arrows was forced to postpone in late January due to illness) was a more commonplace ritual. When Schiff played lothario in the new song “Scream,” several young women did. “Coming or Going” and “Get Gone,” off the band’s 2012 debut “Dry Land Is Not a Myth,” proved as danceable as ever. And they finished with Caballero taking the lead on the banger “City Boy.”

The rest of the evening served as an interesting snapshot of many of the musical subgenres currently thriving in L.A. GRMLN kicked off the night with a set of surprisingly muscular punk-cum-garage-rock (2013’s “Teenage Rhythm,” still a winner). Say Say followed with four-on-the-floor synth-pop that for all its hookiness has become pretty standard fare all over town. And long-running trio the Entrance Band preceded the headliners with a set of textbook psych-rock that, unlike much of its ilk, avoided indulgence. In other words, lefty guitarist Guy Blakeslee can shred, but he measures it and usually gets the formula right.