Solid Gold @ Varsity Theater

Solid Gold

Solid Gold celebrated the release of their excellent debut album, Bodies of Water, with a late show Friday night at the Varsity Theater. Doors did not open until 11:00pm, which seemed like a perfect fit for this dark and moody electronic-tinged band. Some bands have music that fits perfectly on a beautiful sunny day, but not Solid Gold – and coming onstage on a dark and rainy Friday night at 1:00am seemed like a perfect setting to complement the band’s epic-sounding rock and roll.

Solid Gold

The band played through most of the CD, with the four core members taking duties on guitars, bass, keys, drums (both live and sampled) and vocals. The last time I saw them at the Varsity it was the early hours of January 1st 2008, and they were dressed in all white outfits. Tonight, in an aesthetic more closely matching the mood of their music, they came out dressed in black. My first thought was that the band members, with their styled looks and their front man sporting greasy locks and a mustache, looked like a Kings of Leon cover band (luckily they don’t sound anything like them). The band brought along a visual artist to complement their live show with some trippy movies and lights. The glowing structures that sat on stage reminded me of smaller versions of the set-ups that Cut Copy and Hot Chip have. I would image that as Solid Gold get bigger and bigger, crowds can expect more and more from them as far as psychedelic visual accompaniments go.

Solid Gold

The band, playing many of the songs live for the first time, sounded tight and was in good spirits. They said multiple times that they appreciated the large crowd, especially given how late it was. The crowd seemed a little detached and clearly came in wanting to dance, which is not really what Solid Gold is about. Like The Knife, their music has a lot of the standard starting points of electronic dance music (pulsing beats, snapping snare drums, throbbing and bouncing bass), but it really is not part of that genre at all. Some hands were raised hip hop style to the beat and some of the better lubricated crowd members danced, but for the most part the music simply is not meant to be danced to. Unlike dance music, it is not based around simple patterns of rise and fall with build ups designed to get people tightly wound so that they can uncoil at one moment of designed ecstasy. Solid Gold’s music can be claustrophobic and it is densely layered with post apocalyptic lyrics. While lyrics like “Who is gonna love you when you’re dead?” can sound sexy in a dark and dangerous way, when played slowly over slow marching drums and swelling strings it does not lead to the situation where you want to grind on your neighbor. I am not a dancer, so this was just fine with me, but the alcohol saturated crowd dressed to the nines in their hipster regalia clearly wanted to bust out. It is too bad, but I sensed the crowd near me, about halfway between the stage and the back, becoming restless with the band and many were not appreciating the great music the band was producing on stage.

Solid Gold

Overall, Solid Gold proved themselves to be equally adept on the stage as they are with their great full length. The songs, which often had to be accompanied by pre-set melodies and beats, never felt too programmed and the band had a great stage presence. They are a band that has tons of potential and could easily be on their way to bigger and better things in both the local and national music scene.

[Review by Josh Keller, photos courtesy of David de Young.]

Also: Solid Gold “Bodies of Water” Review