Long Beach is not an attractive city. Downtown, where a shopping mall is under construction, is filled with thick concrete barriers and overhanging chain-link fences. It feels like a demilitarized zone. The city houses the port of San Pedro, and as a result the air seems violently polluted, even for someone who’s been living in LA.
Fingerprints Records is located south of downtown, in a section of town that feels more like a village. Small restaurants and souvenir shops line 2nd Street, and the residential streets branching off are filled with densely packed cottages. Fingerprints is home to an endless selection of used CDs, and browsing through the aisles prior to the in-store performance brought back memories of bands like Dramarama, Catherine Wheel, and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. In the past, the store has hosted burgeoning acts like Tegan & Sara, Damien Jurado, Joseph Arthur, and Matt Costa.
The Paris-based duo Herman Dune took the stage first. Although they got on my nerves during the soundcheck by excessively repeating nonsense syllables, I softened up when they started playing. Their anti-folk music is reminiscent of musical comedy duos such as Flight of the Conchords, but it’s hard to decide whether it’s supposed to be funny, or wry, or earnest in a slightly language-challenged way. Guitarist David-Ivar relied a few times on the sort of guitar rolls you’d hear in some of Nico’s songs, and overall Herman Dune were a thoroughly pleasant surprise.
Herman Dune – “I Wish I Could See You Soon”
Even dressed down in a gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans, Trespassers William lead singer Anna-Lynne Williams helps to make the city of Long Beach a lot more attractive. Her pale loveliness and searching voice brings to mind words like “winsome” and “tresses.” She looks the way that you might expect Emily Dickinson to look, if she were pretty and could play guitar and happened to sing in a band. In high school, Anna-Lynne was the girl who sang a cover of “Fade Into You” at the talent show and of course you had a huge crush on her. She was polite enough, to you and everyone else, but pretty much avoided interacting with any of the social misfits in your hometown, and you imagined that she spent most of her time pining away for some exotic long-distance boyfriend in Norway or Argentina. (more…)
