In Bloom Fest 2018 Rundown, Pt. 1: 21 Savage + DRAM + Slander + Cigarettes After Sex + EL LAGO + Twin Shadow + Get A Life + H.E.R. + Beck

Hey, all — heading full-speed towards the first-ever In Bloom Music Fest, this coming Saturday & Sunday, March 24th & 25th over at Eleanor Tinsley Park, which also happens to be one of my absolute favorite places in this whole damn city. That means just over 50 awesome bands & musicians will be doing their thing over the span of those two days, plus a whole lot of good food, costumes, hill-sliding (maybe?), and a hell of a lot of other stuff.

All of which is cool, obviously, but I wanted to point real quick to a different side of the festival before going into the rundowns of the people playing the inaugural In Bloom. That is, the charitable side. Along with the merch and food and whatever else, the In Bloom organizers have created a “Houston Cares” area at the festival to spotlight some truly, truly worthy non-profit causes.

Specifically, they’ve partnered with civil rights defenders (and a personal favorite of mine) the ACLU, the National Marrow Donor Program‘s Be The Match, voter-registration group HeadCount, The H.E.A.R.T. Program, which helps people with developmental disabilities, and LGBTQ counseling and community center The Montrose Center, all of which are well worth your support. Go for the music, sure, but support these folks, too, if you can.

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s kick off our first pile of randomly-selected In Bloom artists (and keep in mind that the times and stages listed below could change; don’t just take our word on those, okay?):

21 Savage
I’ve got to confess to never having heard of Atlanta-bred rapper 21 Savage until seeing his name on the list of acts playing at In Bloom. And honestly, my first listen didn’t do much beyond make me shrug; it was just kinda “eh,” to me. I was ready to get back to some Run the Jewels or P.O.S.

A few tracks in, though, and I’m seriously feeling the appeal of Savage’s (real name Shayaa Bin Abraham-Joseph) heavy-lidded, deliberate, menace-filled flow over those minimal (mostly) beats. I may be imagining it, but it feels like there’s a debt to DJ Screw’s signature sound on the guy’s tracks, between the half-mumbled verses, deep-as-the-ocean bass, and slo-mo tempos. Savage’s Issa Album, in particular, sucks you in like a dangerous patch of quicksand, taking you down so sneakily you don’t realize it ’til you’re halfway submerged into it and want to keep listening, even though you know you won’t make it out alive.

Also, I cannot help but like somebody who’ll bring wrestling legend fucking Ric Flair along for one of his videos (appropriately, “Ric Flair Drip”). Check it below.
[21 Savage plays at 6:30PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Bud Light Stage.]

DRAM
And then we switch gears pretty dramatically with DRAM. Even though we’re going from one hip-hop artist to another, you couldn’t really find a more disparate pair than 21 Savage and Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith, better known as DRAM.

The singer/rapper is seriously one of the most damn cheerful people in hip-hop, smiling wide and unashamed in every picture, singing in a trippy, high falsetto-ish voice over tinkly keys, video game sounds, childlike flutes, and rubbery basslines — despite the fact that every other freaking song is about sex, he just sounds so happy all the time, like Pharrell on some heavy-duty meds. It helps, too, that his songs are all about real life, where he’s talking about getting stoned at parties, hitting on girls at music festivals, or going salsa dancing.

It’s telling that there’re more and more folks out there that sound like DRAM, by the by; the latter song, for one, sure sounds a hell of a lot like a goofier, no-cares-given demo for Drake’s later hit “Hotline Bling,” but I’ll give the Canadian a pass on that and instead note how nice it is to see hip-hop get fun again. I’m psyched to see people like DRAM or Lil Yachty or Aminé out there now, who aren’t trying to look hard but are more about having a good damn time doing whatever the hell they want.
[DRAM plays at 5:10PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Bud Light Stage.]

Slander
Like Savage 21 above, Los Angeles EDM duo Slander are new to me, and I’ve only been able to listen to a handful of tracks so far. The breadth of the stuff they do is pretty impressive, I’ve got to say — they shift from Skrillex-esque dubstep to sweet, vocals- and keys-heavy atmospherics in the span of a single verse(?), dive sideways into some crazy metal/EDM mashup, drop some heavy-ass trap bass, and then go off again to craft some Chemical Brothers-level electro-pop, and each of those forays works really damn well.

Which kind of goes to explain how these guys — Derek Andersen and Scott Land — have surged to prominence after just a handful of years, going from DJing parties to opening for Benny Benassi and hitting the big stage at festivals all over. I kind of want to dislike Slander, honestly, because they’re a couple of SoCal frat boys (yes, literally) who just sort of dove into the EDM genre and magically came up smelling like roses, but…well, they’re good.

So maybe “magically” isn’t the word, and I’m being too damn quick to judge based on Andersen and Land’s shared background.
[Slander plays at 6:30PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Ostara Stage.]

Cigarettes After Sex
Okay, this one just flat-out blew me away. El Paso/Brooklyn band Cigarettes After Sex make hazy, drifting, head-nodding indie-pop of the best kind possible, with bits of sleepy shoegaze meshed beautifully with frontman Greg Gonzalez‘s crystalline, androgynous, Trembling Blue Stars-esque vocals, the soft, insistent jangle of Mazzy Star, and just a hint of Belle and Sebastian’s more baroque moments. Oh, and maybe a little-tiny bit of Radiohead peeking in, especially on “Sweet”.

It’s absolutely low-key stuff, as you can probably imagine, but gorgeous and lush and perfectly balance — even when the lyrics are actually pretty gritty, as on “Young & Dumb,” where Gonzalez croons, “You wanna go / where the girls are young and dumb / and hot as fuck / Where they’re dancing in the streets / with nothing on” — building this weird-but-wonderful feeling in my chest that makes me think of sunny days spent crashed out on the carpet with my headphones on, blissing out to those gentle sounds washing through my ears and into my head. I’m loving the hell out of it, and yeah, I want more.
[Cigarettes After Sex plays at 8:40PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Fauna Stage.]

EL LAGO
Folks who read this little site might recall that we here at SCR blathered a bit a while back about awesome Galveston band EL LAGO. At the time, yours truly had only gotten to check out a couple of the band’s songs, “Into the Clearing” and “Colors,” but even that brief taste was ridiculously impressive, making me eager for more.

I’ve since been fortunate enough to check out the band’s debut full-length, Colors, in its entirety, and it lives up to all my hopes and then some. The guitars are deft and sinuous and busy without being over-the-top prog-rock, instead serving to wrap themselves around frontwoman Lauren Eddy‘s strong-yet-alluring vocals, pulling you in towards the sound as a whole. There’s a bit of Sonic Youth at times, a bit of My Bloody Valentine at others, a whole bunch of Kate Bush (mostly thanks to Eddy’s just-wavery-enough vocals, which also make me think of Tori Amos at several points), a fair helping of Jesus & Mary Chain (see the stellar “Tell Me How It Ends” for proof), and an Explosions in the Sky-ish kind of soaring, yearning vibe that I can’t help but love.

There’re several Houston-area bands I’m liking a whole hell of a lot right now, but even in that crowd, EL LAGO stands out as something special. I know they’re playing early at In Bloom, but dammit, make an effort to get out and see ’em. You won’t regret it.
[EL LAGO plays at 12:20PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Bud Light Stage.]

 

Twin Shadow
I’ve been trying to get into Twin Shadow for years now, it feels like, but it’s never quite gelled, at least not for me. I listened briefly to 2010’s Forget, then tried my damnedest to make 2012’s Confess work for me, but…I just couldn’t make it fit. It was too precious, too steeped in primary-colored New Wave, and seemed like it was more style than substance.

The past few days, though, I’ve been listening to Twin Shadow’s (George Lewis Jr.) more recent work, on 2015’s Eclipse and on this year’s brand-new singles “Brace” and the seriously-’80s-throwback “Saturdays,” and holy shit, there it is; at long last, I get it. Lewis’s voice and delivery on tracks like “Old Love/New Love” and the aforementioned new tracks is so full, so impassioned, so intense that it breaks right through the barriers I’ve put up ’til now. The New Wave influences I’d heard are still there, to be sure, but now it feels like they’re balanced out by a gospel/soul side that makes everything more real, somehow.

Seriously, I’m sitting here listening to Eclipse and feeling like I’ve never truly heard Twin Shadow before; I dunno, maybe it’s me that’s changed, become more open to the sound, ready for it at long last. Whatever happened, though, whether it’s me or Lewis who’s changed, I’m damn glad for it.
[Twin Shadow plays at 5:40PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Fauna Stage.]

Get A Life
And now for a very, very different kind of one-man-band, with Houston’s own Get A Life, better known as Chase DeMaster, aka the mastermind behind cool-ass record label VeryJazzed and electro-pop outfit children of pop who also happens to perform with Deep Cuts, Guess Genes, Kult Dizney, and probably another ten fucking bands floating around out there. I swear to God, the guy’s a machine.

Musically, the two songs I’ve been able to unearth by DeMaster in his Get A Life guise, “What You Deserve” and “2 Plus 2 Equals 5,” are delightfully raggedy-edged and intentionally lo-fi, bouncing from one motif to another with barely a nod sideways but always making it feel like it was totally, completely meant to be that way. It’s nonsensical and quirky, especially on the latter track, which makes me think of wholly underappreciated Teenbeat band Eggs and lo-fi kings Guided By Voices back in the Bee Thousand era, and yeah, I’m loving the shit out of it.

DeMaster’s not done yet, thankfully, and there’s apparently a full-length on the way, tentatively entitled Our Band Could Be Your Get A Life, and which’ll be mixed by Yuuki Matthews of The Shins(!). Looking forward to it…
[Get A Life plays at 1:40PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Flora Stage.]

 

H.E.R.
So, it seems H.E.R. isn’t technically anonymous anymore, having revealed her identity — her real name’s Gabi Wilson — but she’s still managed to keep a pretty massive aura of secrecy over her life outside of the music she releases; she’d rather you focus on that, rather than on who she is, where she’s from, who’s she’s dating, and all that other crap. And honestly, I find that pretty refreshing, a nice shift from the TMZ-driven celebrity world that seems to envelop music in general and H.E.R.’s own type of soulful R&B in particular.

The good part is that H.E.R.’s music stands perfectly well all on its own, without any need for the manufactured drama. In eschewing the spotlight, Wilson instead focuses your attention on her smoky-smooth voice, lush, sultry, nighttime-sounding beats, and yearning, uncertain vocals about love and need and everything that goes with that, and that’s an awesome thing. The music dwells in the same world as Solange or maybe The Weeknd, although I can’t help but think of Alicia Keys, too; there’s a definite vocal resemblance there. It’s intense and wonderfully layered, the perfect soundtrack to the first tentative night with a new lover (or maybe a rekindling with an old flame).
[H.E.R. plays at 6:50PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Fauna Stage.]

Beck
Well, damn. I can still remember pretty vividly the first time I ever heard Beck; I was in college and somehow got a hold of a copy of the “Loser” single (either from the university paper or from KTRU — that part I’m fuzzy on, because Old Age), and when I listened to it, my jaw actually dropped open. I’m pretty sure I asked my friend Josh, “What the hell is this?”, but within literally minutes he and I had memorized the bulk of the song and would annoy the shit out of anybody and everybody by randomly repeating lines. Actually, okay, that was mostly Josh, who made a habit of yelling about getting crazy with the Cheez-Whiz whenever he was happy about something. Anyway…

Fast-forward 25 goddamn years, and not only is Beck still alive and still making music, but he’s damn near an elder statesman of the now-vintage alternative scene, one who’s never been content to just stay where he started but who keeps building and building and building onto what he’s done before. He’s got a foot in both worlds, where I can still sing you songs from Odelay as soon as you start calling out song titles, but I also dearly love mid-career (so far) stuff like 2002’s Sea Change (“Lost Cause” is a fine, fine song), and I’m mesmerized by the stuff he’s doing now, with 2014’s Morning Phase and most recent album Colors from just last year.

What’s crazy is that while Colors sounds as different from “Loser” as can be, with its sleek beats and synths, it’s still recognizably Beck; I can still tell it’s him as soon as “Up All Night” comes on (although I will admit to thinking it was maybe, maybe Miike Snow for just a second there). Not only does the guy still look exactly like he did back in 1993 when I first heard him, but he’s still making music that makes me sit up and listen. That’s about as high a mark for an artist as you can hope for, in my book.
[Beck plays at 9:30PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Bud Light Stage.]

Okay, my eyes are bleary and my skull hurts, so I’m going to call it for now; more will be coming, I promise, so check on back…