San Cisco are cute as. They filled the air of 170 Russell on Friday night (22 May) with their pink, poppy jives and tones of teenage love before a mixed crowd of excited gals and admiring fellas.
Looking at Jordi Davieson (guitar, vocalist) I imagine there’s a fair few posters of the guy up on the walls of young ladies about this fair country of ours. He seems to have a gentle and romantic nature and reminds me of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in ‘500 Days Of Summer’.
Click here for photos from the show.
All band members are genuinely good musicians and they put on a fun show. Though their tone and nature may be mild and sweet, the music and the performance they put on is actually energetic and lively. The lighthearted nature of their music bops and bounces around like a child on a jungle gym. It spins and dances around and brings about an air of carelessness and looseness that makes it hard not to pop your shoulders and groove along.
Image © Katie Dutton
I remember mumbling to myself in the mosh pit: “By god that’s got to be the hottest drummer I’ve ever seen”. Scarlett Stevens is definitely a treat to the eyes but just as much to the ears; she brings the heat back there on the drums as well as singing a couple songs of her own throughout the set. The girly charm of ‘Magic’ in particular made a nice impression on me. But it wasn’t all Jordi and Scarlet; the whole band were in good form.
Josh Biondillo (guitar/ keys) stood at ease letting out the relaxed and colourful guitar melodies, crooning riffs and soft chords that range onward toward Vampire Weekend-like cheeky progressions. While the slick-haired Nick Gardner pushed the tracks along with the bass while adding interesting game-like noises on the synthesizer, which mixed up their sound a bit.
Image © Katie Dutton
Jordi engages the audience well; when he wasn’t playing the guitar he’d walk around comfortably on stage, making eye contact with people, pronouncing his words very deliberately and making signs with his hands as he went along. He even took time in one song to sit himself down in the middle of the stage, holding the mic loosely and bobbing his head from side to side as he sung.
They finished the set with ‘Run’, which I think is their best song; it’s got a surfy guitar running through it and even verges on psychedelic at points, in that there’s something wobbly about it, like musical ripples cruising through your head. It’s kind of funky too, but funky like Prince not funky like ‘You Sexy Thing’ by Hot Chocolate. Everyone knew the song and all showed their love with cheers and shrieks; everyone certainly got down and jiggly to it.
Image © Katie Dutton
No one was prepared to let them go as they walked off the stage and the volume of the people wanting an encore saw the band back out in 20, 30 seconds. The first song was Jordi standing there all mild by himself with the guitar softly playing ‘Skool’. The second song was ‘Fred Astaire’, a track from their first album with a catchy and well-known chorus that the crowd sang-a-long to as the night came to a close.
They’re hard to put a finger on San Cisco. They’re as indie pop as it comes, but I could definitely feel depth beneath their adolescent buoyancy and I would say the youthful, lighthearted impression I got from them is an intentional one.
Click here for more photos from the show.
