A year of so back Matthias gave me a DVD of a few hundred songs from Iceland bands on it. When I popped it in, the first track was “My Delusions” by Ampop. It took a few listens before I could move on to the next track. We tried to find a way to bring them to New York a while back for an Iceland band showcase but things didn’t pan out. Last week they made the twenty-plus hour trip from Reykjavik to play a couple shows in LA. Matthias caught the first night at Cinespace then we met up for an early show at Silverlake Lounge the following night.
Sometimes when you’re in a small club you can tell a band is used to playing much larger venues. For a three piece, Ampop has quite a big sound and when the keyboard isn’t crapping out, it’s large enough to fill most venues around town. Their sound is based in sixties pop with a heavy dose of keyboards. There’s no bass player and most of the bass lines came from one of the two miniature keyboards perched on top of the main one. At one point while everyone was rocking out they all had kazoo’s and were humming along in fuzzy harmony. Even after seeing hundreds of shows, I can’t say I’ve seen a whole band rockin’ kazoos.
The Lounge had a surprisingly good turnout for an early show. The first band of the night, Autodrone, brought some straight ahead rock with quite the alluring front woman in Rachel Luria. Her vocals reminded me a bit of Sleater Kinney and she did a great job at keeping the energy high.
For those in the New York area, Ampop and Autodrone will be playing two nights at Pianos, tonight and Tuesday. If you go, you should bring along your kazoo to join in the fun.
HEY….we’ll do a contest…yeah….that’ll be fun. The first person to email me with “Ampop Tix” in the subject line will get put on the list plus one for Tuesday show.
