Check out pics from the Tontons' tour kickoff in our slideshow.
Friday night's wonderful assortment of tasty sweet indie pop was just that -- delicious!
Now, you're probably wondering if you can you have some cheese with that opening description. Why yes, you can, metaphorically, at least. Imagine a platter of triple cream brie cheese and fig jam, which is a good balance of sweet but not too sweet, making it pretty satisfying to my taste buds. Yeah, it was a pretty satisfying show.
It seemed like the rest of Friday night's attendees shared the same consensus, judging by how Fitzgerald's upstairs room was buzzing with energy throughout the evening. There's no better way to put it -- pretty much the whole crowd seemed nothing short of happy.
The night launched with Vincent Priceless as Portal Walker, a fairly new spacey experimental electronic act from Houston. The set ranged from ambient to more chaotic and, for use of technical terms, dance-y. The right kind of dance-y is good for getting crowds in a good mood, and Portal Walker did just that. I dug it. I can say that he effectively portal-ed the night in.
When A Sea Es took the stage, I really couldn't tell that it was in fact their first show. This four piece set lead by Austin Smith donned in what seemed to be a native American headdress was a good transition between the ambient music provided by Portal Walker and the poppy sound of the Wild Moccassins.
The tunes I heard of A Sea Es could be compared to the likes of maybe Of Montreal's melodies and Built to Spill when some heavier guitar bits broke through their songs. Mid performance the lead singer broke out a ukulele for the song "Sleepy," turning their sweet sound even sweeter for just that song -- almost into some kind of samba without the percussion. Their closing song "Doubler" had a great keyboard hook, leaving me wanting to hear more. From this first show, I can tell that they will have many more to come.
