3/4/14

SHOW REVIEW: CHAPPO and Royal Teeth at The Pike Room on March 3, 2014



Brooklyn based psychedelic rockers, CHAPPO, rocked out at The Pike Room at Pontiac’s The Crofoot on Monday night along with Parade of Lights and Royal Teeth. CHAPPO are currently on the road in support of their brilliant soon to be released sophomore effort, Former Future Self, which is slated for a May release. Lead singer, the eccentric Alex Chappo, has a larger than life on-stage persona, which meshes together perfectly with their style of genre-defying rock and roll. CHAPPO’s music is a cosmic blend of psych, indie, and electronic music. CHAPPO delivered one of my favorite live performances that i’ve recently seen from an on-the-rise band. During much of his time on stage, Alex Chappo hides in the fog from fog machine which he controls, sometimes even walking around with the fog machine. CHAPPO was also joined on stage by a trippy, psychedelic LED moon, confetti sticks and psychedelic lighting. Their live performance was somewhat reminiscent of The Flaming Lips most recent performances or an even weirder David Bowie.



The band received the biggest response during “Come Home”, best known for the iPod commercial that it was featured in and their recent single, “I Don’t Need The Sun”. Music from their new album, Former Future Self, also seemed to receive a very warm response from the audience. Their instrumental arrangements sounded quite sharp on Monday evening, even with plenty of exhilarating changes from their recorded versions. CHAPPO may be playing tiny theaters now as they hone their craft and perfect their live show, but I imagine they’ll be playing much larger venues within a few years’ time.
Royal Teeth, hailing from New Orleans, seemed to have had quite a large fan base in the house on Monday night due to non-stop touring in the Detroit market. They played songs off of their recent album, Glow, and even threw in a cover of The Knife’s “Heartbeats”. During the performance of their hit single “Wild”, the audience went just that. In the course of their set they performed several new tracks which they've been working on including the radio-ready song "Rich". Royal Teeth's vocalists, Nora Patterson and Gary Larson, seem to share vocal duties on every song, while still playing other instruments.  Royal Teeth are sure to gain more and more momentum with their non-stop work ethic