Beach Bunny’s Return
If you are not a local band, it is a special treat to get to see one of your favorite touring bands twice in a half year span. Albeit, it has happened once already in the last year for me with Lagwagon who played two shows of two different albums and returned for Punk In Drublic, but that is a less common occurrence. This time around the special occasion was Beach Bunny returning for a bigger room in the Nile and with another set of cool touring musicians with Ky Voss and Wednesday.
Kicking off things was Ky Voss. This three-piece started with a technical issue as their vocal processor died right out of the gate. In the end, they went forward with the pure vocals for the night’s set. The only unfortunate part is that it is a portion of that electronic sound found in her music. While that sounds like bad news, her singing voice was wonderful and worked great in the tunes of the set.
For her music think electronic with an atmospheric pop music. In addition to Ky Voss, the band includes drummer and guitarist that blend into the electronic samples she is generating from her decks. Despite the troubled start, Ky Voss played a calm and collected awesome opening set.
Wednesday played the middle spot of the night. They blend a couple genres I have not heard together too often. Those genres would be indie rock and country. That country leaning to their sound is not just in the guitar melodies and tempo, but there is an additional twang brought from a lap steel guitar in the band.
During their performance Karly, lead vocals and guitar, talked about how this show was the furthest they had played from home this night. That they were getting used to the temperature and possibly altitude. Later in the set, a smile was brought to her face as she got a kick out of a group of friends who started to dance around and sing back the lyrics as performed. Wednesday would keep those smiles on themselves and the crowd as they finished a fantastic set.
Last was Beach Bunny’s return to the valley of the sun. This night reinforced that the band is about making sure people are having fun and keeping safe. It was a running theme as Lili would check occasionally on the crowd, asking if okay and if anyone needed to get water. Like last time they visited, there was someone that went down in the pit they had going causing a short stoppage. Things would be good though and the show would go on. It is refreshing to see bands like Beach Bunny checking on their fans like that.
The set consisted of hitting on new songs from their upcoming album Emotional Creature, including the already released single “Oxygen” with others. There were the already familiar such as “Promises” and “Dream Boy” additionally. Like mentioned above, the pit would open as these songs just invoked energy and excitement from this audience. They closed on Lili asking for the crowd to part and form a “wall of death.” She requested at the first verse of “Painkiller” on the word “jerk” that everyone go crashing toward the other side. It was quite the literal bang to finish an exciting night from Beach Bunny and everyone before them.
