Daiana Feuer on December 7th, 2018

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To write their second Drinks album, “Hippo Lite,” Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley spent a month in a small French town without cell service or Wi-Fi. They hung out with birds, bats, scorpions, went swimming every day in a river because it was so hot their minds were melting. They watched the “Jurassic Park” trilogy, probably more than once since those were the only DVDs they had. These conditions generated the bizarre atmosphere on “Hippo Lite,” and last night at synagogue Pico Union Project, the band invited an attentive audience to join them on a unique head space vacation.

“This is so weird,” said a guy standing next to me in the audience to his friend. Neither of them really had a clue about what they had come to see. He meant it positively, he was smiling, as if his concept of music was being blown apart before his very eyes only to reveal a shiny puzzle box he eagerly wanted to crack open. Neither Presley or Le Bon really spoke to the audience. The room was dark save for some shifting colored lights. It was not a performance about performing. Neither one seemed to want a spotlight for themselves. Le Bon sang lead mostly, alternating between guitar and keyboard while Presley focused on all the high notes he could pluck on his guitar, joining in on vocals here and there, and a rhythm section bolstered and filled out the songs.

Some of it felt more like moments caught up in a daydream, and that’s likely how the songs came about. The performance included selections from their first album, 2015’s “Hermits On Holiday,” such as the delightful title track, and “Corner Shops” stood out, one of the more accessibly playful tracks from “Hippo Lite,” which, by comparison, is a more “weird” record than the first. The stew of odd arrangements and atonal fragments translated into a pleasantly brain-warping live presentation. Without knowing all the background, attendees could just let their heads be crunched by the constellation of notes emanating from Presley’s guitar or fall under the curious spell cast by Le Bon’s lilting voice, but it’s even more fun to think about croaking frogs of the sweltering French countryside that pulled these songs out of their imagination.