Show: Alt-J
Date: August 28, 2013
Venue: Hollywood Palladium
City: Los Angeles, CA
Alt-J
Photos by Nicolas Bates
Written by Dan Sinclair
Here at the Hollywood Palladium, the writer learns an important fact before the band even plays: beautiful young women love Alt-J. Yes, the boys from Leeds, England are in town for the second straight night to share their unique experimental style that I can best describe as electronic folk music with their good-looking fans here this evening (the writer excludes himself because of both his aesthetic appearance and his responsibility to report objectively on tonight’s event).
When the lights go down, the beautiful people start cheering, but before we see any of the members of Alt-J, we instead hear Tyga’s “Rack City” blasting out of the Palladium’s speakers. Then the shadows of the fellas take stage partially hidden by a giant cloud of smoke. The crowd goes wild as they recognize the dark silhouettes of frontman Joe Newman, keyboard player Gus Unger-Hamilton, bass and guitar specialist Gwil Sainsbury and drummer Thom Green all taking their places.
Bright lights flash over the rising smoke and Alt-J plays their instrumental intro much to the delight of all ears in attendance. After Newman raises his fingers in the air to count, “One, two, three,” he then leads his band into “Fitzpleasure.” The song translates well from the studio to the live stage as it’s the one with arguably the most complicated changes in tempo, musical arrangement and style on the debut full-length album An Awesome Wave, and the band doesn’t miss a single beat.
Unger-Hamilton thanks the crowd and even recognizes a small group among them that was there for the previous night’s show. Newman gets the most light shining on him for the soft “Bloodflood” and then lets Sainsbury share the spotlight with him as the two jam close near each other for “Buffalo.”
Unger-Hamilton gets his keyboards really sounding like authentic piano for one of the best songs of the night, “Something Good.” Check out the video for this song on YouTube (or wherever)—it’s got a bull getting even with a matador. The crowd starts to dance along for this one and it gets the loudest cheers of the night… so far.
Keyboard player and frontman stand next to each other to masterfully harmonize the interlude “Ripe and Ruin” a cappella before the rest of the band jumps in, launching crowd favorite “Tesselate.” This one gets all the ones who weren’t dancing before really start shaking their asses here. This includes the tall drunk dude who has partially blocked my view throughout the night. Can’t tell if he’s actually dancing or about to faint, but either way, he’s moving.
“Warm Foothills” slows things down and features some whistling from Newman. The crowd enjoys singing “This is for Matilda” for the song that features one of those four words in its single-word title. Newman can’t help but smile big, hearing them all emphatically scream out the line in unison.
Sainsbury leaves the stage and Green just sits there to let Unger-Hamilton and their fearless lead singer perform “Hand-Made.” The rhythm section then rejoins them to get things going again in the faster-paced “Dissolve Me.” It wakes the crowd up and gets everyone dancing again and singing along. The keyboards take the prize for most important instrument in this song, helping to balance the changing tempo from electric to folky with ease.
More a cappella action as Newman and Unger-Hamilton perform an interesting cover of College’s “A Real Hero.” You know the song. It’s that one about Ryan Gosling driving a car and killing people. Alt-J closes the set with “Taro” to make sure everyone is dancing again as they leave the stage… even the young brunette lady next to me who is really, really bad at it.
The encore starts with “MS,” saving the best for last, sending the L.A. crowd home with their hit single “Breezeblocks.” The crowd sings out “I love you so/Please break my heart” with everything they’ve got left. They want more, but they also know these guys are pretty much out of songs at this point.
August has been quite a month for music and Alt-J certainly was a fine choice to close it out. They’ve got an interesting sound going that translates well to live performance. While some bands fail to live up to the high standards of overproduced albums, the lads from Leeds take those standards and profoundly raise them with a fine combination of sound, energy and fancy-pants lighting. I was always cool with the letter J, but apparently the alternative is even better.