West Coast indie-pop band TV Girl sure know how to light up a room. Well, yeah, there were good actual lights at their Orlando concert, but their music and mien are what set this absolutely packed house aloft on a party cloud.
TV Girls at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
TV Girls at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
Working the nostalgic palette of Saint Etienne with the playful funkiness of the Avalanches, these three indie bros recontextualize and remix 1960s pop effervescence like beat junkies. Beaming with bright color and chill breaks that kick much more live than on record, their jams are a tailor-made cocktail for good times.
TV Girls at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
TV Girls at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
TV Girls at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
TV Girls at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
On stage, their performance was lively and frontman Brad Petering’s banter was comedic poetry. Shake it all up together and they had everyone cooling out in the same sparkling pool.
Yohuna Credit: Brian Vu
Much more sedate and earnest, but no less good, was the opening set by Yohuna. Besides being a phonetic spelling of the correct way to pronounce her first name, Yohuna is the nom de plume of itinerant American songwriter and producer Johanne Swanson.
Although her performance was simpler and more sober than the party boys of TV Girls, it was a generous advance of her forthcoming album Mirroring, which doesn’t officially drop until June 7 on Orchid Tapes/Fear of Missing Out Records. It’s a record to anticipate because for this artist it’s both a pivot and a real blossoming. It could even prove to be a threshold work for her.
Yohuna at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
On it, Yohuna emerges from her synth origins like never before with a conspicuously wider sonic lens and instrumental vocabulary that even stretches out to orchestral finishes. More fundamentally still, it’s an album that shows off the growing confidence and lucidity of her hooks.
Yohuna at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
But even if this economical solo set didn’t quite capture her broad new instrumental horizon, it did showcase Yohuna’s deepening melodic contours and the angelic warmth of her voice. Unlike many other slow-pop specialists, the airy altitude that Yohuna achieves is never in jeopardy of evaporating. And even though her drift is calm and reflective, it’s never a bummer or, worse, a bore. Yohuna is making indie pop of elegant introspection that’s speeding toward a point of crystallization and finesse.
Yohuna at Soundbar Credit: Bao Le-Huu
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