Charly Bliss and Darwin Deez put on a smashing show at the Black Cat last night. While the first group is a pocket-sized bubblegrunge quartet and the latter is made up of men roughly 7 feet tall and 100 pounds playing indie pop and dancing to Willow Smith, the two acts have a few things in common besides their NYC addresses:
1) A love of bopping around; and
2) A tendency to bash desserts.
Let me explain a bit further.
Charly Bliss’ bubblegrunge genre is a delightful mix of upbeat sound and hard rock that comes together best in their tracks like Love Me which will have your head nodding instantaneously to the beat. Lead singer Eva has one of those seductive Marilyn Monroe-esque voices which goes along nicely with the sometimes edgy chords. Eva herself is an amazingly accomplished bopper – the woman rocked an old-school scrunchie and a Flinstones Pebble-style top pony tail that was all.over.the.place as she jumped and skipped and wiggled and jived to the beat. Extra bopping points went to Eva when I spotted her jamming just as ferociously in the back of the Black Cat room to Darwin’s songs after her set. The band’s latest album, Soft Serve, has a great graphic of a hand squeeeeeeezing a soft serve cone to bits on its front – a perfect embodiment of the band’s sweet but hard core nature.
Charly Bliss got the audience pumped up for Darwin who took the stage with his group shortly after to promote his new album, Double Dip. The cover? A fist smashing the daylights out of a layer cake. Like I said, it was a big night for bashing desserts. I’ve seen Darwin a few times and the man is still going strong. His signature choreographed dances (tall men bopping in unison – what could be better?) to retro pop and hip-hop are still probably my favorite parts of his live acts, although of course his music is his masterpiece. Darwin played mainly new songs from his album but also regaled his long-time fans with favorites such as Constellation and The Bomb. Unfortunately, Darwin’s set was plagued with a few technical issues that the band handled graciously, promising everyone “hugs after the show” for their patience and joking that Darwin was “checking his email” as he tried to help the sound tech on the computer.
No worries, Darwin, we still, and will always, love you and your crazy tresses. Don’t ever change.