DIIV and Japandroids played the Paradise – 12/09
After selling out Brighton Music Hall back in June, Japandroids moved up another tier in the world of Boston rock clubs with last Sunday’s also-sold-out show at the Paradise. New York City’s DIIV opened the show.
When I last encountered DIIV, the band was opening for Wild Nothing at their September Brighton Music Hall appearance. At that show, their set was one of the most rapturously received non-headliners I’d ever seen. The crowd was entranced by DIIV’s propulsively danceable tracks, and more than a few people were demanding an encore once they’d left the stage. Sunday’s set offered a hiccup or two, but one of the most intriguing things about Brooklyn’s latest buzz bands shined through: they fit just as comfortably in an opening slot for Japandroids’ loud-as-hell adrenaline rush as they do for the subdued, dreamy grooves of Wild Nothing.
DIIV is fronted by Beach Fossils guitarist Zachary Cole Smith, whose amusingly self-aware stage presence puts an immediately likeable face on the band. He and equally floppy-haired second guitarist Andrew Bailey spent the set engaged in dueling guitar playing that rested somewhere between reverb-y 80s jangle-pop and effects-heavy 90s shoegaze. Drummer Colby Hewitt and bassist Devin Ruben Perez formed a tight rhythm section which often wore the band’s admitted krautrock influences proudly on its sleeve.
The collection of songs which comprise DIIV’s debut LP Oshin are built of simple, fluid structures, and they strike the right balance between those familiar tropes of the past few decades’ alt-rock trends and sharp songwriting skills that prevent those references from feeling stale. The live arrangements don’t differ dramatically from their album counterparts, but Smith and company deliver the songs with a certain charisma that makes them feel that much more punchy and immediate.
Much like the September show, an audience likely unfamiliar with the band was largely captivated after only a few songs. DIIV are an easy band to grow fond of, and I’d wager that these opening slots gained them more than a few new followers. Sunday’s set unfortunately ended on a slightly sour note when Smith abruptly left the stage after a technical issue forced him to cut the last song short, much to the disappointment of crowd and bandmates alike. There’s no accounting for the capricious whims of a malfunctioning guitar rig though, and even a slightly unceremonious end to the set couldn’t cast a shadow over it.
Flubs aside, spirits were high for the entrance of the evening’s headliners: the rapidly ascending garage-gaze duo Japandroids. In an almost impossibly high-energy marathon set, guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse tore through the majority of both of their LPs and a handful of obscurities with boundless enthusiasm.
As soon as King struck the opening chords of “Adrenaline Nightshift,” an entire floor of fans converged into a mass of sweaty, shouting bodies, all of whom seemed to know every word of every song. The barrier-free, all-ages show was about as punk as a venue like the Paradise gets. Even the security staff was remarkably cool with the high concentration of stage-divers and crowd-surfers, an increasingly rare sight in a city where such youthful abandon is often cracked down upon by the powers that be.
King explained partway through the set that the band had already been on the road for this second tour in support of 2012’s great Celebration Rock for quite some time, and that bodies and voices were rapidly approaching their breaking points. The night’s nonstop barrage of blaring power chords, shouted choruses and breakneck tempos begged to differ. Japandroids seemingly play each and every show as if it’s both their first and last ever, pouring an extraordinary amount of energy into their earnest, anthemic songs. Watching them perform is a life-affirming reminder of what live music can be, and why someone like me worships it so.
