Cold War Kids and The Little Ones at the Echoplex

While I was patrolling Ticketweb for upcoming shows I stumbled upon The Cold War Kids and The Little Ones benefit show for 826 and African Water Wells at the Echoplex. 826 is a student program that helps students improve their writing skills. African Water Wells is self explanatory. I figured I needed another show prior to my vacation to Las Vegas and it happens to be for a good cause.



Let's Go Sailing have conjured up a respectable amount of buzz lately. They happened to be the special guests openers for the show. You may have heard one of their songs featured in Grey's Anatomy or heard their KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic broadcast. Let's Go Sailing is the brainchild of Shana Levy who used to be in Irving. Clad in a retro Radio Clyde t-shirt like Frank Zappa, Shana and her sailors led the audience through a nice collection of mellow indie pop with flourishes of violin and piano. The mix at the Echoplex was horrible as it was difficult to hear Shana's vocals. I may have to catch them again at the better sounding Troubadour on July 19th with Oh No! Oh My!.






The Little Ones have been garnerning an equal amount of buzz with their EP release "Sing Song". The Little Ones also recently did a session for spinner.com were they recorded some tracks in a studio for a podcast. If you check out the Little Ones page at spinner.com you will see they used my quote describing The Little Ones as "Bubble Gum pop with an infusion of Beatles like sensibilities". I still stand by this quote and think they have a bright future ahead of them. The Little Ones were also a victim of bad mixing as Ed Reyes (Guitars/Vocals) vocals were mixed too low. They played a short and sweet thirty five minute set that left the crowd wanting more. My song recommendations are the whole EP but especially "Oh! MJ" and "Lovers Who Uncover". They will be heading across the seas to do some more touring in the U.K. before returning to record their full length debut album.





Cold War Kids Setlist for The Echoplex (6/12/07)

The Cold War Kids keep heating up. They are onward bound for the Bonnaroo festival and then have the lofty job of opening for the White Stripes on their U.S. tour. By the time the Cold War Kids started playing, the mix at the Echoplex was decent enough to hear Nathan Willett's vocals or it could be that Nathan was yelling them out. The crowd was singing along like a choir when "Hang Me Out To Dry" was played. The Cold War Kids have fine tuned their live show and are extremely tight live. It was also interesting to see members of the Delta Spirit set up their gear and help out on "Saint John" by banging on cymbals and snare drums. The real treat of the night was when they played their new song "Expensive Tastes". It was a wistful love song that centers around Nathan Willett's vocals but quickly becomes encroached by reverb laden guitars and a shuffling drum pattern that quickly disassembles itself back to Nathan's vocals. I got my tickets for the White Stripes and Cold War Kids show in September to see how many White Stripes fans they can convert. My guess is that they won't be playing the Echoplex or the El Rey theatre in the future. I foresee multiple sell out nights at the Wiltern.