Latest Review: Magic Lantern – High Beams

Long Beach’s Magic Lantern have finally gone and released a new sonic document after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. Eagerly anticipated by those who have been biding their time waiting for the band to get on with their uber limited cassette only and CD-R releases (their Self-Titled CD-R was limited to 30), “High Beams”, the band’s latest opus [...]

M.I.A at the Echoplex night 1

M.I.A at the Echoplex by nicolemonet2002

Still playing catch up…It was halfway through M.I.A.’s set that I remembered that I had seen her perform before, it was at The Glasshouse in Pomona back in 2005. See the night before when Scott and I were at the Echoplex for Dead Meadow he said he remembered seeing her then and thought it was with me, but I didn’t remember it one bit, which could mean one of two things or maybe a little of both, either it wasn’t that good or I have seen to many shows to keep track of them all.

Anyways this night I brought AATW with me because she had Tuesday off and could finally allow herself to go out on a worknight (she’s gnarly like that about work). We showed up arond 9:30pm and were thankful that we had been wise enough to purchase tickets when they went on sale as we saw a line twisting around the parking lot and out on the sidewalk and down the block. We had some drinks and passed the time people watching and commenting their interesting outfit choices for the night. Oh and watching a couple of older women from KCRW walk around in a complete daze as they attempted to hang a couple posters, I know if doesn’t sound funny, but it was at the time.

M.I.A. got up on stage around 10:30 and blasted into a set that was 50/50 new songs and those from Arular, and it was around 11pm that I realized that I had indeed seen M.I.A. at The Glasshouse, a neuron fired in my memory bank as I focused for that moment on M.I.A.’s backup singer (the same one as when I saw her before) triggering the memory.

We took off halfway through the last song of her encore, “Paper Planes,” a track that samples The Clash’s “Straight to Hell” instrumental, it was good, but we were hot and sweaty. All in all her performance was spot on, a definite improvement over the last time I saw her, which can probably be attributed to more experience and a much more enthusiastic crowd.

Songs with the loudest reactions of the night were “Bucky Done Gun”, “10 Dollar”, “Boyz”, and “Bird Flu”, which is probably my least favorite track to date from her.