We had the pleasure of watching Little Dragon perform last night at The Independent in San Francisco and I am a little lost for words to describe the experience. R&B, Soul, Electronica, Acoustic, New Wave, Pop, Indie… all styles of music that can equally describe a part of their sound, yet none of which accurately capture the entire essence.
The audience was filled with an equally diverse crowd of people too… fratty jocks, hip-hop thugs, r&b cats, electronica geeks, college kids—all of who had one thing in common, a passion for this little critter. Who would’ve expected that a big, white, band from Sweden with a tiny, Japanese singer could pull such a massive audience on a Wednesday night!?
Little Dragon delivered.
As a four-piece band (Yukimi: vocals, Håkan: percussion, Fredrik: keyboards, Erik: bass), I went into the show expecting the keyboardist to be leading the show. But surprisingly, it was the rythm section that laid the musical foundation of most of the tracks. Not that the fantastically bearded Frederik was slacking at all. No, in fact all performers came together as a collective, taking on multiple rolls as the songs required to generate a seamless audio soundtrack to the performance. And honestly, there were times I couldn’t even figure out who was playing what… in the best way possible.
It’s not a giant leap to assume that most people in attendance last night agree: these guys are on the fast-track to stardom. And that’s okay by me. The world clearly needs more musicians in the world like Little Dragon.
Photography by kc! Bradshaw
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