Blackburn + Sweetzer Has Moved

The husband and I scooped up some friends and headed over to Spaceland last night to check out The SoftLightes. West Indian Girl played before them, which garnered quite a crowd. Lead singer Mariqueen Maandig, lithe and clad in a tiered, billowy red dress, had a bit of a Will Farrel-SNL-Blue Oyster Cult-cowbell thing going on, but with a tambourin. Just seemed like tambourin overkill. I mean, do you really want all that much tambourin… in every song? Well, if you have a fever for some tambo and a kind of ambient vibe, West Indian Girl is your band.

But on to The SoftLightes. The band played a bunch of stuff from its latest album Say No! to Being Cool. Say Yes to Being Happy, plus jam-of-jams ‘1983′ from Electric Pocket Radio (the album frontman Ron Fountenberry put out with group The Incredible Moses Leroy), and a new song that I’d never heard before. Seeing The SoftLightes live is always fun because Fountenberry tends to let loose and allow himself to rock star it out more. His overall vibe is restrained but not uptight; I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: he always leaves you wanting more. Also, the multimedia slide show projected behind the band is always somehow wry and whimsical at the same time.

Fountenberry made a slight wardrobe change when he hit the stage, ditching a camel-hued cardigan for a black vest over his v-neck tee. Lucky for a dude in the audience who was wearing the same hat-v-neck-cardigan ensemble, since you really don’t want to show up wearing the exact same thing as the lead singer performing; in that scenario, you just lose.

Fountenberry’s guitars. A suited Darth Vader projected behind the band.

The keyboardist and Fountenberry switched spots for ‘1983′.

Audience Members: I respect the commitment to the overalls, but not the overall effect. Really, a puffy coat, already? She had to be sweating bullets.

Sometime after 1:00AM, it rained for about twenty seconds. I caught it before it dried up twenty seconds later.