by Joel Chaffee
Glasslands, in the boonies of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, boasts a lovely decor of corrugated tin ceiling and some sort of bridge support keeping the building up. This atmosphere suited Tuesday night’s opening band, Dynasties, just fine. The two-man effort distorted and drummed its way through half-a-dozen numbers, with alternating two-chord riffs and brief lead-guitar virtuosos. The songs, though not drastically different from each other, seemed born of the two fellows in the band having spent reams of time futzing around with how best the propulsive and fill-ecstatic rhythm could match the voraciously distorted guitar. What was emitted was a loud, often intriguing sound. Aside from a few brief outbursts, the vocals were largely absent. I wondered what a few melodies might do for the sound.
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The night’s second act, Darlings, pop-ed their way through a fair number of little gems. The four-piece did not exhaust their melodies. “Teenage Girl,” “TV,” and a new song, as yet unnamed, displayed a forming prowess with the pop form. “Teenage Girl” has the rhythm section chasing the riff around, while the verse bounces with power chords and the group’s laconic vocals. The “woo-woo” chorus pinnacled the evening.
Two-thirds through the set, the rhythm player, Maura, switched to a synth (a moog?) and enhanced the sound tremendously. (Two guitars are wonderful, but when they are largely mimicking each other, why not use the synth constantly?) Both “Yeah I Know” and “TV” were displays of an easy but unavoidable collusion of pop and some dirty garage sound. With the corrugated ceilings it was not difficult to imagine some rooftop or backyard somewhere, amps to ten, cymbals a’crashing, melodies atop guitars. Darling.
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