JOIN USIt’s quite a rare sight to seepeople in Hard Rock Café leave their food and cocktails to watch a live band playing.
Despite the disappointing sound, Chennai-based indie electronica band ‘The F16’s’ made the venue sound a lot better than it usually does when they performed there recently.
Drawing a substantial crowd for a mid-week gig, the five-member band played an extremely tight set.
Other than all the songs from their recently released EP called ‘Kaleidoscope’ — ‘Prelude’, ‘Light Bulbs’, ‘My Shallow Lover’ ‘King’s Dream’, ‘Nuke’, ‘Who Robbed The Rogue’ and ‘Avalanche’ — they played other originals like ‘Farfisa, Where Are You?’, ‘You Can Wonder’ and ‘I Hate Early Mornings’. Some new songs like ‘Lest We Forget’ and ‘Little Forest Cry’ were performed too as was a cover of ‘Mansard Roof’ by ‘Vampire Weekend’.
The band’s chemistry and energy undeniably worked in their favour, be it for the psychedelic keyboards, fuzzy guitar riffs or sing-along lyrics.
But the frequent technical glitches were hard to overlook, irking not only the band but the listeners too. For that very reason, even though they managed to give a room full of people a good time and rendered a memorable performance by Hard Rock standards, they weren’t as thrilled as they ought to have been about the gig.
“The gig was hollow because of the sound constantly backfired on us on stage.
The sight of people chilling was also a little discouraging. But it was all right,” said frontman Joshua Fernandez.
Of course, the audience didn’t mind the glitches too much. “It was a mad, mad gig! It’s probably the tightest indie act I’ve seen in a long time. Beautiful energy, beautiful people and all of it came together with foot-tapping, head-banging euphoria,” said Vivek Ravindran, who watched them live for the first time.
Karthik Basker, frontman of ‘The Bicycle Days’ was also seen at the gig. Asked what he thought of the band, he said, “They’re a lot like ‘The Foals’. I like where their music is heading.”
Arjun, another attendee, said, “They are extremely talented musicians and there’s a very happy vibe to their songs. Although the sound could have been
better, it’s been a persistent issue with the venue for a while.”