As a founding member of Vampire Weekend, three very successful albums and almost a decade later when it’s comfortable to indulge in side-projects and solo excursions, bass player Chris Baio is surely feeling relieved that he was born with a cool name – for Baio has such a ring to it that it stands up and tells any other potential stage-name that might have been floating in consideration to firmly get fucked.
Indeed, the New York indie-pop giants recently lost their keyboard player, Rostam Batmanglij, who now operates as Rostam, and Ezra Koenig (pronounced Ez-Ra), who fronts the band, has recently worked on notable projects with Karen O and Major Lazer.
Even, the group’s drummer, Chris Tomson’s surname is Thompson spelt like a hipster.
You can probably tell I’m stretching a bit now, but my point is that Chris Baio has an apt name for the synthy-funk-pop that he has written onto his debut solo record, The Names.
Tonight’s support is little known, local band called Featherwest.
The trio inhabit a stage crammed with cables that presumably lead to cool sounding electronic things, because when they glide into their first song around 9pm, loops and samples get tossed over live instruments to rather impressively timed effect.
Featherwest take a number or two to find their feet, but it soon becomes evident that they’ve practised well to create music that grooves hard to a pop beat.
The only thing needed is a more relaxed stage presence; the individual musical parts gel very nicely to form a smooth-flowing set, but the three musicians playing them don’t quite look entirely comfortable just yet.
Half an hour later, Baio gets up and settles behind a stand of midi-controllers and mixers, accompanied by a lone guitarist.
The list of perks of being the bass-player in a globally known band evidently doesn’t include not having to do much promotion for solo shows, because a surprisingly small amount of people have come to show their interest tonight, however one of those perks is almost definitely that Baio has experienced every kind of scenario it’s possible to have at a gig, so he instinctively grabs control of the room with a hearty shout and a big smile.
After brief intros, Baio gets stuck into his set.
Although the music is catchy and danceable, the lack of atmosphere in the audience is a real turn-off, which is a shame because Baio actually puts on a very confident showing, complete with endearingly crap dance moves and a vocal performance which is kind of good, but also largely indistinguishable through the cloud of electronic beats and bleeps.
About mid-way through his set, Baio breaks out his most popular song, ‘Sister of Pearl’, which gains a cheer and a bit of a sing-along, and after encouraging the crowd to dance “like it’s a Friday night, 1am, at Nice’N’Sleazy’s” a couple of people even sway from side-to-side a little bit.
Again, it’s a real shame that a more substantial crowd didn’t gather, because Baio is clearly a very comprehensive song-writer and there are definitely points during the performance where the throbbing music and flashing lights would have been awesome in a more appropriate setting.
The guitar playing is good, and it mixes in with Baio’s loops and backing tracks really smoothly, but again, it seems as if the show could have been infinitely better had there maybe been a live drummer.
Words: Greg Murray
