Tesseract Escapes Thanos, Lands Cosmic Cube in Downtown L.A.
Photos by Angel Melanson
Tesseract at The Regent Theater with Plini + Astronoid
May 3, 2018
I'd like to begin this review by saying that the Regent does not serve Jack Daniel's so I'd like to apologize to all my readers for what may be a Jim Beam quality review. Imagine that. A rock venue without Jack Daniel's. Might as well replace all the bands' instruments with slide flutes. Anyway, I got to the show late and missed the first band. So I will instead review a live performance of Astronoid that I found on YouTube.
Wow. The audio quality on this cellphone video is not good. I appreciate some of the shredding, but this band is really not my thing. All their songs sound like the guy wrote them about the same girl. And they never dated. He was just obsessed with her. They should be headlining a Knights of Columbus hall in Newton, MA with a bunch of bands that just graduated high school and are about to break up before they go to college.
This is a 30 minute handheld video. Bet this videographer had a great time.
Back to the Regent.
The thing about instrumental prog is that a lot of it is so goofily whimsical. Plini sounds like something Sonic the Hedgehog puts on his headphones when he's going for his early morning jog along the coastline. Do you think Sonic exercises? I like to think when he's not saving the world, he's cracking a cold one and chowing down on some chili dogs, but then again, he's gotta maintain that killer physique. We all remember the potbellied Sonic of the '90s.
Plini is SMOOTH. Like a freshly waxed chest smooth. Smooth like Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas sitting on silk potato sacks going down one of those big yellow slides at the county fair smooth. I don't usually listen to instrumental stuff but they have dope grooves. It was so smooth I couldn't help myself from making love to my old lady and was promptly thrown out by security. They said "You can't do that here." I said "What? Express myself?" Fucking fascists. We had to both put on wigs and mustaches and purchase new tickets to sneak back inside.
Plini's namesake comes from the frontman that writes all the tunes, Plini Roessler-Holgate, not to be confused with the hard-to-find beer from Russian River Brewing. His between-song banter sounded like the manager from Flight of the Conchords if he was nervous but also on Nyquil. He actually has a dry wit and was quite humorous. When introducing the drummer, he mentioned that they found him by making an ad saying that the only requirement was to be able to twirl sticks. They started a full band djent chant for the headliner. "TESS ER ACT. TES ER ACT." which the band continued to do while the frontman attempted to keep talking. "Trust is really important in a band."
They ended on a track so epically beautiful, it sounded like a father finally being proud of his son.
While the between band music before Plini was indie rock and alt R&B, the pre-Tesseract tunes were just unremarkable ambiance. Or it was the new album. I don't know.
You know that wife I told you about before? I made her up. I'm sorry. I WAS wearing a wig and fake mustache though. After Plini walked off I made a new friend named Tiffany who was in town from Miami. She tried to get me hooked on her drink of choice; a whiskey-Sprite. She informed me that they also don't stock Jameson at the Regent. I don't even drink that Irish shit but that just doesn't seem right.
A few months before frontman Daniel Tompkins rejoined Tesseract he posted on Facebook about how he missed screaming. So he rejoined the band that would allow him to do that and released two albums with no screaming. Nice one, Danny.
Tompkins is very serious about singing. He took it down an octave when he knew he couldn't hit the notes on the record. He moved very little, like a young karate student stiffly performing a kata. But he did manage to nail a lot of the higher notes from previous vocalist's Ashe O'Hara's record.
The light shows consisted of spinning lasers, possibly to thwart any potential jewel thieves.
As they do on their albums, songs flowed into each other like movements in a sonata. They plucked away at their retooled version of "Smile." New songs mean bar time. I'm jealous of the happy couples enjoying any of the new stuff. Imagine being that oblivious and content. The band blew their load too early when they played "Deception, Concealing Fate Part 2" third song in.
Had an air bass guitar duel with my new Floridian friend to "Of Matter - Retrospect" as Tompkins dropped the octaves of the Ashe O'Hara penned track. He then joined the crowd to help him sing the outro for "King". The band bowed out with the banger "Concealing Fate Part I - Acceptance." Glorious. Then the house lights come on and a reggae version of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" played.
