Lalita

Although their catalog is dominated by lush, dreamy songs Japancakes are the architects of the loudest live show I have ever witnessed. My ears still buzz when I think about it today. Five or six years ago they played an in-store gig at the Urban Outfitters on the drag near UT as part of South By Southwest. It wasn’t a plum gig but the band had packed all their gear into a van, driven to Austin and were going to play as many shows as they could. Setting up in the store the band chatted with the dozen or so folks who had come to see them (thankfully we outnumbered the afternoon shoppers) and they marveled at the loft-like space and the sound they thought they could make in it. When they fired everything up the sound must have been to their liking because they wound up almost bringing the place down. To their credit, they didn’t just crank their amplifiers up and try to drown everyone in attendance with pure volume. They played their set so tight and changed the dynamics enough that people kept inching closer and closer it. I wanted to hear a bit more of the interplay between the pedal steel and the guitar, to get just a bit more of that rhythm - and I wasn’t alone. With each passing song the band would get a little louder and the crowd got a little closer. I didn’t realize what was happening until a pause before the final song and I realized my fillings were humming.

Getting two new albums from Japancakes this year has been awesome for me. Their song-for-song cover of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is amazing and the album of almost all originals Giving Machines is just as cool. Of all the tracks to pick from I’m going with “Lalita” because it sounds like it would be a wonderful live track - the swooping pedal steel, the right touch of strings and a solid backbeat that could fill a room and get my fillings humming again.

Japancakes - Lalita