El Guichino | Lemonade | Golden Birthday
The Empty Bottle - Chicago IL
November 25th 2008

Last time El Guincho was supposed to come through Chicago, mastermind Pablo Díaz-Reixa ended up cancelling most of his summer tour because of that dreaded beast, exhaustion. If last night’s show at the Empty Bottle - El Guincho’s first ever Chicago show - is any indication, it isn’t so hard to see how this kind of work could be exhausting.

Flanked by a bandmate named Aleix banging on a sampler, Díaz-Reixa bounced like a giddy schoolboy behind his keyboards and electronics, playing a set of new material and reworked tracks from his excellent album Algranza. Still, for all of the movement onstage, it didn’t compare to the movement in the crowd, with the floors shaking from everyone’s best attempts at salsa dancing. In between songs, people overwhelmed Díaz-Reixa with their best college Spanish (kind of makes me wish I didn’t take French for a moment). He was appropriately gracious, saying that back in Barcelona, some people said that Americans wouldn’t take to his music because he sang in Spanish. It just goes to show that if you make dance music this infectious, relentless, worldly and thoroughly modern, it doesn’t really matter what language you’re singing - People will still storm the stage even if the encore is the “Palmitos Park / Kalise” medley again.

Not to be counted out were the Brooklyn by-way-of San Francisco trio Lemonade. Like El Guincho, the group relied on tropical samplers and pre-programmed beats. But in combination with live drums, bass and Callan Clendnin’s howling, effects-laden vocals, they struck a terrifying but celebratory chord. Díaz-Reixa made time to call them amazing in his set, and rightly so. The band’s experimental take on dance music might be one of the best compliments to the headliner.

Starting things out were Chicago’s own incense-enhanced - they actually lit incense onstage before they played. Quite the welcome exchange for cigarrette and pot smoke if you ask me - Golden Birthday. The drum-machine driven quartet traded instruments back and forth between their hazy, reverb drenched pop tunes. Even as the beats and bass lines got busy, the songs all had a pleasingly mellow vibe that had many of the soon-to-be dancing crowding nodding their head.

photographs by Andrew Mitchell | all images © Pensatos