Saturday night at the Empty Bottle started out with local foursome Pool Holograph. The group led off the night with jangling guitars and a thumping bass line – a sound reminiscent of 90’s alt-punk, but with a crisper and cleaner sound. The group played a collection of tracks from their 2015 album Mortals and their older self titled EP. By far the highlight of the set was the audience participation – the lead singer handed off a tambourine to an especially ardent fan in the front who put it to good use while he showed off his stellar moves without a hint of self consciousness.
I decided to crowd source a description for the second band, Sports (we’re going to take an aside right now to say, yes. That is a fantastic name. Although if I had to make one change to it, I would change that last s to a z. Sportz!) because I’m lazy and I love to ear hustle (so I guess less crowd sourcing and more evesdropping). The combined adjective combination I arrived with in the end was “sexy-time-r&b-jazzy-electro” which is realistically way better than any description I could’ve written myself. The foursome came onstage rocking shiny metallic silver jackets, and the lead singer was shirtless (which was totally appropriate for their sound). The group swayed their long mops of hair while the crowd swayed their hips to the rhythmic tracks. There was something weirdly mesmerizing about the whole thing – I’m definitely coming out for these guys’ next trip to Chicago.
Finally BRONCHO came onstage. I heard a lot of conversations about this throughout the night – and we learned definitively when lead singer Ryan Lindsey came onstage and introduced them – it’s pronounced “Bron-Cho” and not “Bronco”. The crowd got super into the group’s hazy, distorted indie rock (which sounds more like punk rock when it’s played live), and got especially hyped when the band launched into catchy single “Try Me out Sometime.” Overall the night was just a great combination of unexpected sound combinations in a fantastic venue.