A couple of things to note:
1. I don't know why I know the Teddybears. They just feel like a band I should know and when I was feeling claustrophobic and scared during Manu Chau last weekend, I decided it was best to check out this band that I felt like I should know.
2. Festivals do something to you where shows are much, much, better in the desert. Some wonderful combination of the heat, the ridiculous amount of people and all the girls with the plastic frames who love the same music you do make the performance much stronger.
3. It is knowing these two facts that I left Sunday thinking that the Teddybears were the best thing I saw that day.
That being said, I decided to see them again last night to see if it was only the desert effect or did these three dudes from Sweden have what it takes to really hook me in for real. The consensus? They are good. They are talented musicians who know how to play indie dance rock and more importantly, they know how to make a crowd move. Upon listening to the album, you would never think these guys put on the show they did. Just like in the desert (it was an almost identical set), these guys rock live. Great beats, incredible percussion (two drummers) and a great combination of electronic music and music played live. It is nothing that I would normally listen to, but you have to respect three guys in teddybear heads that can make a packed El Rey dance.
Their album, Soft Machine, is ok. Nothing I would ever reach for (except maybe for a party playlist). The Teddybears themselves don't sing, so the album is full of guest artists such as Iggy Pop
and Neneh Cherry. Live, the band brings a rotating crew of three guest vocalists who handle the vocals on most songs. For a few songs, they would play sans vocals and your eyes would drift to the screens behind them where the band would project clips from classic movies such as Easy Rider, the Godfather, and Apocolypse Now. Only difference is that these clips, like the band in front of you, one character has a teddybear head. And your mind drifts some more and you think, how the hell did these guys come up with this?
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