MUSIC REVIEW: SO & SO - LIVE AT HOTEL CAFE

Live, Electric, Sexy & New; A Little Something-Something For Indie Kids

By: Josh Moorhead

May 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last ten-and-a-half years kind of disappointed. Every decade seemed to have its own definable sound and style. Our parents really lucked out with Rock N’ Roll, but maybe not so much with bell bottoms. The ’80s will ensure, at least, that comedy will never die with the reliance on synthesizers and Flock of Seagulls haircuts, not to mention hair metal. The ’90s saw hip hop and rap really take off, while at the other end of the spectrum rock glam’d down to grunge, and by the end of it all we got delightful but varied alt rock like Third Eye Blind, Matchbox Twenty, Everclear, etc. Okay, so I’ll always be partial to the ’90s. But what’d the ’00s get? And what are we moving into now? What’s the next invention? That invention, it seems, is amalgamation. It’s the music that would happen if The Postal Service, Bob Dylan, The Cranberries and The ‘Stones cut an album together.

That’s kind of what So & So is. So & So is a band you may have never heard of, but in Hollywood at The Hotel Cafe, I heard them loud and clear. Tuning up my laptop keyboard here… Okay. Let me tell you about that experience. It goes a little something like this…

Some people you dig hanging out with invite you to a show on a Monday night. You don’t know the band, and given a few audio clips online, it sounds as if it might be a little too Lilith Fair for you, but you go because you haven’t seen ‘em in a while. When you get to The Hotel Cafe, you’re surprised to see the band is more expansive than you’d originally thought…which also goes to say there are some very rock-and-roll-looking dudes on guitars and bass and drums, etc. The expectations are starting to be challenged now.

The lead singer takes the stage helping set up the band. Her name is Amie Miriello (though you’d only find that out later), and this moment is akin to that of the first time you realized girls didn’t have cooties. Or when you saw that girl in fourth grade who you’d hopelessly like until senior year. She’s a knock-out, basically, and she’s wearing these leather pants that you’re not wondering so much how you could get into but how she even got into them. Needless to say, you’re paying attention now, but it’s still kind of sexist.

Then the band starts, and this is where you get really depressed — where you really get your Icarus on. She is crazy talented. Her vocals are effortless but not at all without range. They glide up and down with complete control like a hand out of a moving car’s window. And when the music stops, she’s funny, bantering smoothly with the crowd — self-aware but with just enough front-woman’s edge to instruct the crowd to attention. This is obviously the sun, and you have flown too close.

Like the most dangerous Bond girls, Amie is a woman whose beauty is only matched by her talents. Then you remember you’re supposed to be a critic and that this is an article, not a note to be left in her locker. Sigh.

So & So is Amie’s band. Now I’m going to be a critic. The recorded packaging of their music I don’t find as gripping as the live stuff, even as the band lamented a lot of technical problems they were having at The Hotel Cafe show. I didn’t find it noticeable. While the songs had a connective, femme quality, it wasn’t exclusive. So & So isn’t a Sex and the City band — it’s open to all comers, age, race and gender. The lyrics and vocals, of course, carry a degree of Amie’s personality and imprint, which, you know, ain’t so bad. The actual stylings of the band were pretty impressive. Songs varied from being mostly instrumental, invoking Explosions in the Sky or Nick Drake at his more pensive to folksy, funky sprawls that one of my fellow hanger-outers said reminded her of Paul McCartney’s Wings. My favorite So & So cuts were those with a harder rock edge, with a heavier rhythm at their anchor that reminded me of The Stones’ “Paint it Black.” So & So is, therefore, versatile but seem mostly to make themselves at home, especially in the recorded versions, with a sound that is the amalgamation I mentioned — acoustic guitars paired with electronic sound-scapes and observant lyrics that range from folk rock-pop to full-on pop, aiming to mish-mash the best parts of other sounds and genres.

The fact that Amie and her band were able to trump my brute preconceptions and sexist estimations is a bit of a victory and a bit my-bad to begin with. The fact that they were able to overcome technical difficulties and still impress was, yes, impressive. It’s only natural to compare one band you see to another, and it’s always the band’s duty to make music that makes them the standard to be compared to and not the sea of comparable. But the comparisons my inviters and I drew show that the band has got a lot of potential, and much of it already realized. I could see Amie herself winning next year’s American Idol, for example, in about half a season flat — her music becoming the soundtrack to women driving to and from work, grocery stores, soccer practices, bar outings and other day-to-days the country over. But I’m not sure that’s her style.

At any rate, seeing So & So goes to show the story of Hollywood — the talent that’s playing and waiting to be found in the next bar down the next alley, if you look for it.