Few things will more reliably bruise your ego and inspire awe than a sick person doing something better than the healthy you ever could. At Friday night’s sold-out show at The Independent, this person was He’s My Brother She’s My Sister frontwoman Rachel Kolar, who, despite her fever, managed to co-lead the exuberant LA-based quintet with enviable elan.
Svelte in a skintight jumpsuit, Kolar supplied the sex appeal and vocals — granular, not honeyed — in short, deliciously unorchestrated. She performed alongside Rob Kolar (vocals and guitar), Lauren Brown (tap dance and drums), Oliver Newell (upright bass) and Aaron Robinson (slide guitar). However, the electromagnetic hum that usually develops- between lead singers with good chemistry did not quite materialize because, unlike pseudo sibling bands before them (re: The White Stripes), lead vocalists Rob and Rachel are indeed related.
Their music, which has a vaudevillian quality (in both the auditory and aesthetic sense) sounds part glam rock, part folk. “Tales That I Tell” featured tap-dancing drummer Brown, who, by engaging every limb (simultaneously tap-dancing and striking the drums), appeared as, “an octopus drumming” as she herself has labeled it. As if to neutralize her energy, Robinson performed slide guitar masterfully but with catatonic stillness. “It has come to be common-place in the indie scene for performers to be cool, casual, and under-expressive,” bassist Newell said in an email interview. “I don’t have any complaints about that, but I do see that we don’t fit that convention.” Certainly not. His hair sleek from sweat rather than pomade, Kolar skittered across the stage with his guitar, often just shy of colliding with a smiley, glitter-lidded Newell, who was using the stem of his painted bass to pivot around, dancing barefoot in animal-print leggings. Kolar, in carnival regalia (striped pants and a bowling hat) found enthusiastic acolytes in a group of dancing girls in the front right of the audience, who encouraged his sartorial choices (“Yeah, take that jacket off!”).
Aside from the lull in the amp-lugging intervals between sets, audience engagement — namely dancing — was a significant part of HMBSMS’s appeal Friday night. “I love to dance and celebrate, and that’s what I’m doing onstage,” Newell said. “That’s a big part of what we’re all doing. I love that sometimes people are inspired to join us.” Dancing is precisely the idea behind their latest album title, Nobody Dances In This Town: “Town after town, we’d visit and often get the crowds moving, “Newell said. “After the show, people would frequently come up and say something like, ‘Wow, that was a great show! People were actually dancing! Nobody dances in Portland!’ We heard it over and over again in Cleveland and San Fran and Tampa and Houston. Naming the album Nobody Dances in this Town is a kind of tip of the hat to all our dancing friends across the country.”
Lazy comparisons liken the quintet to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, with whom they toured last year. Both groups certainly foster a convivial quality that is conducive to a communal listening, yet similarities largely end there. Even superficial differences emerge: If Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros seem to have tumbled out of a caravan headed for Burning Man, then we could say that HMBSMS wandered past the perimeter of their circus tent. But when it comes to crucial criteria like sound and quality, where Edward Sharpe sounds dated and focus-grouped, HMBSMS have managed to maintain some sense of the occult — which we can only hope modest venues like The Independent will continue to preserve.
Contact Neha at [email protected].