Allah-Las Drain The Bottle & Entertain The Crowd
Published
Before a trendier-than-thou audience at Bethnal Green’s Oval Space, Allah-Las brought some midweek booze-hounding to London’s East End.
Touring the recently released Worship the Sun, the American five-piece played an energetic hour-long set through drunken bleary eyes and an endless pumped mist from the side of the stage.
The stage’s backdrop of a scratchy road-trip video was Lynchesque, and the frequent instrumental breaks sounded like they belonged in a Tarantino montage (get twisting, Travolta). The evening’s postmodern full house was lacking only a Michael Madsen cameo.
Allah-Las’ aforementioned second album, follow up to the self-titled debut from 2012, has been well received by critics and punters alike (read Subba-Cultcha's review). Its popularity was easily apparent through rousing receptions from the crowd on new tracks such as ‘Artifact’, the brilliant ‘Ferus Gallery’ and current single ‘Had It All’.
As is so often the case with live music, the LA quintet’s set is much more rousing than their recorded material. In part this could be attributed to the influence of the bottle of whiskey that was drained between the group, and was shared as readily as their instruments (most notably on ‘Tell Me (What’s On Your Mind’)).
The music is more country than Mac Demarco, and the live show less raucous than the Black Lips, but there’s something similar to these artists in the Allah-Las’ make up. Their songs are as catchy and roughly polished as they come, and it’s fantastic because of it.
http://allahlas.com/ Written by Luke Forshaw Pictures from Matthew Todd
