Slow Club / The Pleasure Kills / The Saucy Jacks
Rickshaw Stop; San Francisco, CA

Dear Internet Overlords of Music, or IOM: who decided that playing thoroughly fun music isn’t enough anymore? Why are you so derisive of people who stick to trusted ideas and interpret them exceptionally well? What’s so damn wrong with sacrificing innovation for the sake of, you know, being really good? Dudes, you should have seen this show. It would have turned you right around.

IOM, I want to organize a sock-hop just so San Francisco’s Saucy Jacks can play it, and you will be there. You would love their nice suits and how they sounded like The Strokes channeling The Beatles. In other words, heartbreakers, for sure. This band knows how to self-edit and excels at turning out one short, irresistibly catchy and clever song after another. It would be the best start to a night that would eventually turn you around and remind you why twee and indie pop happened.

After my sock hop, we’d change into a leather jackets, get drunk, and see The Pleasure Kills in a basement. Hopefully, their totally badass singer, Lydia, would spit beer on you like she did to her bandmates. You would renounce your allegiance to Karen O and flail around your arms like a teenager at a ska show, but you would feel less awkward because you’d be listening to scuzzy rock with killer synths. We’d stay for a while and probably trip over their bassist’s cord as he jumped out onto the floor. It would be exhausting because there is no way to avoid dancing with this band.

And at the end of the night as we’re sobering up, Slow Club would gently ease us into our hangovers. Watching Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson feels like overhearing a conversation between two best friends picking apart the highs and lows of their respective romances and falling outs, and we’d feel nostalgic and make some self-depracating comments about our own failed relationships. Taylor’s astonishingly clear voice and Watson’s skilled guitar work would keep us in that perfect place between waking and sleeping, and as they strolled out into the audience to play their last song, we’d gently drift off into dreams about sunny afternoons and frenzied dancing.

I hope you’ll come with me on this night I’ve imagined for us. You’ll need to open up your hearts a little bit.

Love,
 Elzee

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