If it weren't for friendship, one would wonder how two distinctly different groups would end up on sharing a stage. No Kids with their sweet Canadian dance pop and Parenthetical Girls with their cabaret anthems — the pairing left the bearded masses in states of mad scratching and syncopated head-bops.
No Kids quietly took the cramped stage, but managed to spread themselves out to give the stage an appearance of grandness. Crafted of P:ano keyboardists Nick Krgovich and Julia Chirka along with drummer Justin Kellum, No Kids had little command of their created illusion. The band ripped through tracks from a promised new album to half the crowd — the other half eager to drink as much as they could and stay as far away from the stage as possible. No Kids had a calming effect on those hunkered near the band, lulling the audience into tipsy sways and small but controlled heap-bops and shoulder-shrugs befitting of wallflowers. The start-and-stop pop of No Kids is similar to the wealth of keyboard-based bands out there (Chromeo, Matt & Kim, Mates of State) -- that is, if those bands downed copious amounts of Valium and Xanax. In a live setting, No Kids’ tight-knit grooves were repetitive, turning each song into deformed clones of the previous. It wasn’t until the set-closing “Halloween” that the band and crowd got on the same page, but by then the once-clustered crowd was already spreading itself to random corners of the small club. If No Kids proved anything, it was that perhaps the bedroom was the perfect place for them.
Parenthetical Girls gladly gave up their bedroom escapades, as Zac Pennington stormed the crowd in a floral sweater vest and elderly thrift store button-down. After a snafu (involving a detached mic cord) halted Zac’s march through the middle of the club, he (literally) picked himself up, brushed himself off, and jumped back into the song as if it were scripted. Rather than being the polite knocker No Kids has presented themselves to be, Zac and (((GRRRLS))) kicked in every door in the house with a mix of Roxy Music swagger and Matthew Friedberger static. While the breadth of their set focused on a jittery mix of slow-fast-slow and loud-quiet-loud, (((GRRRLS))) made it work by throwing a bit of old style and grace with the kitchen sink instrumentation that has become a trademark of modern indie musicmakers. While the bedroom may no longer be large enough to contain an entertainer as brash and exuberant as Zac Pennington, it’s a treat to know that the music (((GRRRLS))) create is still steeped in posters, LPs, journals, and toys.
[Photo: Sarah Meadows]
