Grouplove >> hit Phoenix at Crescent Ballroom this week for a very fun show w/ PAPA. This was the second time this past year they've played downtown at the same venue and it was an excellent combo of 2 fantastic bands representing LA.
PAPA featured 4 dudes playing about 8 different instruments. The red-bearded lead singer also played drums and busted out the shaker on the last few songs. With their piano-driven alternative fun rock I thought they sounded similar to Jack's Mannequin or even Phantom Planet during the Jason Schwartzman days. They warmed up the sellout crowd nicely for the headlining Grouplove.
One thing I've noticed about the Crescent Ballroom house tracks between bands is that they are random as fuck. This time I heard 'Where I Wanna Be' by Shade Sheist moments before Grouplove took stage. The randomonium didn't stop there though as Grouplove got on stage in single file dancing in strobe lights galore to 'Monster' by Kanye West and company [that song reminds me of Thanksgiving since 2 years ago I listened to it about 100 times day when My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy first dropped].
Random characters in random garb? Plenty of that too. A long-haired, blonde Tom Cruise in the 80's yuppie blazer played a mean ukelele on several songs. The cute redheaded girl wore a skeleton halloween costume like Johnny and the Cobra Kai wore kicking Daniel-San's ass in Karate Kid. Oh and she wore a very colorful kimono over that [look what I'm wearing - kimono, dogg..what are you wearing?]. The bass player had some crazy long hair and an even longer beard and he dressed like a scarecrow - the one from The Wizard of Oz. He sounded English but I couldn't really tell since every time he spoke everyone else in the band kept looking at each other and cracking up so I thought they were playing a trick on us or maybe it was some sort of inside joke.
Anyway, Grouplove played every single song I've grown to love over the past year since first hearing them at Lollapalooza 2011 including 'Colours', 'Gold Coast' and 'Naked Kids', which they played during the 3-song encore after returning with an acoustic, guitar only version of 'Cruel And Beautiful World'. They closed with their mondo-popular-thanks-to-Apple-ads 'Tongue Tied'.
It was such a great show. I'll definitely check them out again the next time they roll through here which I'm sure won't be before too long since Phoenix was the 'best show of the tour'. I've shared some of the love below so check out the footage and enjoy. As always you can see these and all the rest of the videos from this show and shows past on the zBORED YouTube channel.
