Review – thenewno2 at The Key Club

I took a trip up to the Key Club on Sunset on Tuesday night for Ruby Tuesday, a weekly event showcasing local L.A. bands.  Ruby Tuesday is sponsored by Spin Magazine, Indie 103.1, Adidas, and JVC.  This September’s shows are all headlined by thenewno2.

The crowd at the Key Club was an eclectic mix.  The show was 15 and up, so I was expecting a younger crowd, but instead saw anything but.  For an Indie Rock show to have a good deal of its crowd be made up of people over the age of 40 was somewhat of a shock; even more of a shock were the not insignificant number of people who would be classified by anyone, not just young me, as old.

Before thenewno2 came on stage, we were treated to another local L.A. band, Hatch.  Treated might not actually be the best word – the crowd was not feeling Hatch’s music much at all.  Some of their songs were fairly good, although, as my companion commented, they seemed more suited to being movie background music than to the being the focus of everyone’s attention.  That was fine by me, but Hatch did not close out with their best material.  They went from background music to boring everyone.  Their last song was punctuated by long periods of near silence, or at least near silence from the band: the crowd continued to talk through the song rather loudly.

The newno2 did finally come on stage and did not disappoint.  Led by Dhani Harrison, a man whose tiny frame belies his immense musical talent, and Oli Hecks, thenewno2 (a name I still have to stop and think about before typing to make sure I’ve got it right) play a unique sort of music, a sort of modern-day psychedelica.  Like psychedelica, their music may be better enjoyed while under the influence, but the show was still enjoyable without.  It opened with computer-generated pictures of eyes of all colors, blinking, looking back and forth, projected on three screens set up behind the band.  This was just the first of many images we were treated to on the night, adding a visual aspect to the show that was better than most of the other projected-during-concert art I have seen.

Set up on stage was an odd-looking contraption, the real use of which was impossible to see from the audience.  Luckily, a video feed was set up above the stage, allowing us to see Harrison’s use of the machine – which was unlike any other I had seen used to complete this task – to loop and manipulate parts of the song played by him and other members of the band to create a beat for them to play over.  This created some really good music that finally got the crowd interested after Hatch.  thenewno2 played some songs without using the machine, which were noticeably not as good.

thenewno2 has now played three of their five shows this month at the Key Club.  Next week’s show is again on Tuesday and admission is free, a price that can’t be beat for the quality of the experience.