Live: Puro Instinct @ Echoplex, 7.09.10


Puro Instinct with Ariel Pink / all photos by David Greenwald

What you love is often the product of (very) personal history. Mom listening to Jobim during my childhood has made me forever twitterpated for major 7th chords, for instance. So I’m not sure why I’m so taken with Puro Instinct, who play abstract psych-pop that sounds like Christine McVie taking up downers and hiring Felt as her backing band. Acid tabs in my Fruit Loops? Dad sneaking listens to The Cure in between Fleetwood Mac sessions? I can’t explain it, but it’s there, that magnetic attraction to the band’s pillowy vocals — if lead singer Piper didn’t sway during their set, she could actually be asleep — and glistening guitar lines. Now a quintet, the band sounded an f-stop or two sharper than they did when I caught them at SXSW, but the L.A. group remains soft-focus. Go your own way, girls. (Ariel Pink, pictured with the hair, makes a fine Lindsey Buckingham, don’t you think?) More photos after the jump.

Previously:
Puro Instinct Releases S/T EP
Live: Pearl Harbour (now Puro Instinct) at SXSW 2010