Dust Galaxy, Sitali, & Rob Garza DJ Set @ ESL, 12/6/07

Live performances at the Eighteenth Street Lounge are a bit confusing. In the past six months, the club overhauled the “gold room.” By painting the walls red, applying a strange gold foil to the trim, and installing a foot-high stage in the front of the room, what was formerly a spacious, overly furnished living room is now a dim, sparsely furnished bar.

Although the space is now used most Thursday nights for live acts, the room still has no stage lighting. A November performance by Federico Aubele and Natalia Clavier found the performers--lit only by one exceedingly dim overhead chandelier--pleading into the microphones for “anyone who works here” to give them more light so they could see their instruments. Needless to say, more light was not forthcoming.

Patrons frequently seem confused by the presence of instruments and/or performers on the low stage. Most club guests wander in and out of the room through the evening, while fewer than 50 will remain attentively close to the performers.

But some local acts are aware of the limitations of the space. Local jazz trio Sitali brought their own lighting. They mounted a single blue spotlight, focused on the singer, to the wall approximately 15 feet away from the stage, and placed two red lights on the floor behind them, pointing up at the back wall. These red lights, reflecting off the gold-foil columns, lent the red room a strange glow.

In addition to being surprisingly visible, Sitali were genuinely enjoyable. The performers clearly had a good time while 20-30 audience members smiled and moved their shoulders to the infectious music.

While the stage was cleared for main act Dust Galaxy, Rob Garza (of Thievery Corporation fame) played a special live DJ set for 45 minutes between acts. In honor of the club’s dark dance floor--located 50 feet away--the overhead light was turned off so approximately 15 young men could bob distractedly while they watched Rob’s technique and his glowing mixing board, transfixed. It was a solid set, for all that it was far too short.

When Dust Galaxy took the stage, there was no light display to announce their arrival. In fact, there were no lights whatsoever. Even the meager overhead chandelier that had so frustrated Federico and Natalia was left off so that the band could play in the light from the bar 40 feet across the room. Near the end of the show, someone found Sitali’s blue spotlight and switched it on, shedding some additional faint light on the performers.

The setting is far from ideal in terms of sound mixing—the bongos and keyboard were all but inaudible. The guitars and the bass sounded great together, creating an impressive wall of sound that Rob Garza’s raspy, tone-deaf vocals failed to rise above. As on the studio album, this is one of the strengths of the band; in Dust Galaxy, the singer’s vocals serve as rhythmic punctuation rather than melody.

For a band that was just finishing their first tour together (please note that all of the band members have previously toured with other bands), returning to their home town--to the venue mostly closely associated with front man Rob Garza--Dust Galaxy seemed shy and reticent. They looked serious for most of the performance and rarely addressed the audience.

Although their album had been out for over a month, few audience members seemed familiar with their psychedelic rock sound. The majority of attendees appeared to be either confused club-goers or ESL Music mailing list followers who had turned out for their first taste of Rob Garza’s side project. As a result, the crowd peaked at about 75 for the band’s first couple of songs, after which many wandered off, leaving a very fluid group of about 30 for the rest of the performance.

While a couple of attendees elicited rare smiles from band members by singing along loudly or shouting out tracks off the new album, in general Dust Galaxy’s set seemed strangely claustrophobic and stressed.

Curiously, when asked about the lack of light in the venue, a staff member explained that the lights had been kept low intentionally. Apparently, he speculated, “[The singer] doesn’t think he’s very pretty.” This is patently false--Rob Garza’s hair was looking absurdly thick and lustrous that night. Hair that healthy should always be well lit.