BOBBY’s inevitably eponymous debut is still not quite yet out, but the band is steadily winning hearts and minds, from NPR and BV to new touring buddies Thao & Mirah. The last time I saw TT the Bear’s as packed as it was on Tuesday night might have been for Franz Ferdinand back in 2004 or so, but the crush (like the buzz) was still expectantly building when BOBBY took the stage. TT’s approaches the platonic rock club –sweaty back bar pressing bodies onto the crowded floor, a stage just barely tall enough to distinguish hipsters from budding stars, muddy lighting foiling prolix phone photography. BOBBY’s slippergaze polyrhythms didn’t burn the house down but rather drew us all into a collectivized somnolent trance. What dancing there was was deeply un- (though not in the slightest anti-) social – atomized, undulating shuffles scattered amongst the rapt, po-faced indie kids.
“Sore Spores,” BOBBY’s calling-card earworm, is timelessly evanescent, a hopelessly romantic oxymoron of a song: knowingly naïve, invigoratingly stupefied. The inevitable band analogy might be the Dirty Projectors cartoonishly stunned, as by a frying pan over the head, wide-eyed yet artfully concussed. Amelia Randall Meath, erstwhile of Mountain Man, seized what passes for the spotlight at TT’s; a luscious, buzzcut, camera-shy pixie, alternately bashful and beaming, she is the majorette at the head of the band’s slow charge.
BOBBY’s intertwined compositions offer more openings for the word “diaphanous” than “tribal” – it is chill-tent music for narcolepts, dramatizing the struggle of REM against Delta. If not the most vital of live performances, and better suited to a church with stern wooden pews to stave off slumping, BOBBY’s pixie-led constituents never sank to the plodding that imperils such inward music. It is hard to see where the band can go from here, but for this brief waking moment, they’re a joy to behold.
The following night, in Brooklyn's Music Hall of Williamsburg, BOBBY's excellent set was followed by Thao & Mirah, a supergroupish duo that were different in just about every significant respect. Replete with jangling guitars, the pair's effusive songs interwove vocals that criss-crossed back and forth between collaboration and side-by-side showcase, with both Thao and Mirah taking turns relishing the spotlight's bright light. Where BOBBY was clothed in darkness, Thao & Mirah were bathed in warm light throughout their set. Their run ebbed and flowed between raucous and soothing (Thao leading the former charge and Mirah cooing in defense of the latter); it all led to the set-closing high point of "Eleven," their clicking and pulsing tUnE-yArDs-aided single. By the time Thao's hair stopped flying, Mirah stood holding a sunflower handed to her by a fan. She thanked the crowd, Thao beamed, and it all seemed fitting.
