Concert Review: Smoke Season Are Fire At Rough Trade NYC
Seeing Smoke Season at Rough Trade, I kept on thinking of No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom; their experimental electro-pop pulsed with its same endearing, instinctual sense of love. Throughout history, humanity has been divided by its penchants for violence and community, but both build down to a single motivation/ challenge: to love or not to love. This “Shakespearean” question fell center in their songs that will define future-pop radio.
Gabrielle Wortman and Jason Rosen define their sound as electro-soul with a shot of whiskey, and the spiritual cocktail is WORKING FOR THEM! Gabrielle, again, gives me those Gwen Stefani/ The Kills’ Alison Mosshart “pop-rocker” vibes. She throws herself back in standing, “flashdance” poses and singing mezzo- soprano notes that could, easily, leave her cast in its Opera Season. Yet, her ability to vocally bring elegance and sophistication to love’s rather guttural nature leaves you, actually, thinking about romance as human nature. Maybe, our most “carnal”/ animalistic intuition is our desire to connect, which explains why her and Rosen feel like they have been chained together in light.
Smoke Season – Good Days
I love when artists love their sound, and think they are creating music’s future because THEY SHOULD! Smoke Season’s confidence is their audience’s fuel, and comes through their opposing physicality. As I said, Gabrielle is the dancer. When she is not managing the synths/ keys/ and C vocal notes, she is prancing around like a music-box ballerina coming to graceful life. Meanwhile, Rosen is laser focused, and feels his guitar-soaked hooks and melodies like a bloodline flowing through him: jolting his joints only when the music rush becomes over-powering. Yet, their chemistry bonds them again as they are playful to each other but seducing to the crowd.
Wolves – Smoke Season (Official Music Video)
Overall, Smoke Season felt like stars. I know this is going to sound “funny”, but listening to their catchy tunes like “Wolves”. “Sweetest Thing”, “All At Once”, and “Good Days” made me think of Apple Commercials. Nowadays, for artists the biggest venues of money/ success are commercials, and products, like Apple, that know how to make underground artists, like Sofi Tukker, feel massively indie. Smoke Season’s performance style gives them the “indie intimacy” blended with mass adoration. For More Information On Smoke Season Click Here.
Hello – Smoke Season
