White Williams @ the Echo, 1/27/08

White Williams played the Part Time Punks night last night at the Echo. According to parttimepunks.com, "PART TIME PUNKS is a club that takes over noted Echo Park live music venue, The Echo on 1822 Sunset, every Sunday night. The night focuses heavily on obscure and classic music coming out of America, the UK and Europe in 1978 to the present: Punk, Post-punk, Punk-funk, New Wave, No Wave, Hardcore, Indie-Pop, Twee, Grunge, Electro, Minimal-Synth, Shoegaze, Baggy."

Okay, so I don't really get it either. Seemed like yet another night at the Echo. There always seems to be bands playing one of those genres anyway, but whatever. Everybody wants their name on something I guess.

White Williams is the name for the music project of 23-year old Cleveland-based musician Joe Williams. His debut LP Smoke is as good as it gets for slower tempo dance music. He plays live with bassist Tyler and guitarist Hayes O Crypt. Tyler plays a black Fender Musicmaster and O Crypt plays an awesome white Japanese Fender Mustang, and he's pretty damn good at it too. It's a sharp yet non-piercing sound he's got setup, and he's got the riffs down very fucking tightly.

White Williams is young and small and skinny. His haircut is totally 80's Gahan. At the Echo, he wore a thrift store jacket that looked like he picked it with his eyes closed, a black vest, skinny jeans, and ultra-padded and overly gaudy high-top black sneakers. Anyway, he walked out onto the stage just after 11 PM...he had a mixing board and too many knobs to adjust and a MacBook on one table, and a keyboard that I didn't recognize right across from it. Also, to my surprise, he had a Hohner 32-key melodica (yes I counted in the pictures), which he used on many of the songs! Fucking rad! I was in San Francisco just last week and was looking to buy one until my sister told me I could have hers.

The guitarist and bassist both serve the band well and fit perfectly with the electronics coming from Joe, who goes back and forth from the keys to the controls to the drum beats inside his MacBook to melodica to vocals. He's a smooth operator; he doesn't freeze up, he doesn't fall down, and he doesn't fuck up. He glides effortlessly from instrument to instrument, and rarely makes eye contact with the audience while he steps through his songs. But the lack of eye contact is not one of shyness, instead, it appears to be one of confidence and carelessness; you'd swear he's been doing this for decades. He loosely wraps the mic cord around his hand to prevent himself from tripping over it while he slowly dances through his loungy beats.

There was a petite little brunette in the audience, maybe 21. She was walking around the Echo picking up mostly empty drinks that people had left behind and drinking them down in a hurry. I think in the 15 minutes that she was scourging the stage and bar for leftover icy ass-sips, she MAYBE got a whole drink down her throat. Maybe. Maybe next time the guy she was with could've just bought her a fucking drink, for god's sakes. Making out with that chick must be real delicious. Anyway, point being, she was dancing like crazy, front row, to my side, arms flailing to the point of almost hitting people. Totally into the show, and believe me, this didn't go unnoticed. Joe Williams put the microphone up to her screaming mouth, and turned some knobs to twist her voice up with delay. Didn't really work in the song, but fun nonetheless.

I really liked White Williams live. It was a fun show! I didn't find myself waiting for the next song, and I recognized every album track after only listening to the album a handful of times. It's great fucking music. Think Beck, Hot Chip, and Devo but with a more warm and chill foggy vibe. The only thing I would've added to this show was maybe a fog machine and some colored light beams.

I only paid $10 to get in but I highly recommend seeing him live even if it costs more. Don't trust your instinct, trust mine. Who the fuck am I? Just another blogger. But if you like the bands I listed as sounding similar in style, check out Smoke ASAP. I get the feeling White Williams is going to be huge.

Set List:

1. INTRO
2. HEADLINES
3. IN THE CLUB
4. VIOLATOR
5. NEW VIOLENCE
6. FLEETWOOD CRACK
7. GOING DOWN
8. SHADOW
9. ROUTE TO PALM



Spotted at the show:
Tim Presley of Darker My Love/The Fall
Matt Popieluch, lead singer of Foreign Born