Earlimart, Afternoons, Red Cortez, and the real scene

Kevin Bronson on
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There was a smattering of “Club Rockville” signs around the Echoplex last night, left over from the daytime filming of the forthcoming Internet series “Rockville, CA.” Josh Schwartz’s fictional look at the Echo Park music scene promises to be intriguing, at the very least, but it ain’t the real thing, baby. And last night would have been a great opportunity for a documentarian to capture the full flavor.

Upstairs at the Echo, it was shoulder-to-shoulder for Brooklyn’s Bishop Allen and my new favorite two-piece, Australians An Horse (who were every bit as good as advertised). Downstairs at the spacious Echoplex, radio station Indie 103.1 launched its “Check One Tuesdays” local showcase with a lineup of three should-be headliners — fresh foursome Red Cortez (formerly the Weather Underground), masters of reinvention Afternoons (ex-Irving guys-turned-orchestral pop maestros) and Earlimart, the veteran trio who (appropriately) were treated like Silver Lake royalty, and played like it.

Now this was a scene.

The bloggerati’s biggest curiosity was Red Cortez, whose three EPs as the Weather Underground had garnered them considerable buzz. Tuesday marked only the second time onstage with new guitarist Calvin J. Love (its former guitarist, Sho Bagley, who is returning to college to study sociology, manned their merch table). The quartet had spent recent months writing — and opened their set with six new songs that frontman Harley Prechtel-Cortez [pictured at left] delivered with preacher’s passion and ironworker’s sweat. U2, early Kings of Leon, the Walkmen, the Band … all came to mind during their energetic 9 o’clock slot.

Afternoons followed with a set that reinforced what I thought when I saw them at the Detour Festival — they’re ready for bigger stages. And Earlimart sealed the deal with a sublimely beautiful 40 minutes of pop that saw the trio flex its muscles for the newbies (yes, there were some). As contemplative and serene as Earlimart can sound on record, Aaron Espinoza [pictured at right] and crew are almost a different band live, capable of punctuating their pop with guitar spazz-outs and then silencing the room, as they did Tuesday, when Ariana Murray [pictured at top] takes her turn on lead vocals on “Happy Alone.” If you didn’t get shivers, you were spending too much time gossiping at the back of the room, or you were outside.

Which, of course, is part of the scene too.

Can’t wait for the “Rockville” episode where the lead character misses his favorite band because he’s too busy making nice on the smoking patio.