Oblivion, Brian Oblivion

Is there any band more subversive than Cults, the collaboration between musicians Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin, playing a sold out show this evening at The Earl?

One quickly overlooks the sinister-sounding band name as soon as one hears their sweet, girl-group inspired music, but pretty soon the lyrics start to paint a darker picture, especially in songs like Abducted and Bad Things, bringing one back to the darker implications of the name.

"But to me, death is not a fearful thing.  It's living that's treacherous," says the sampled narration at the beginning of Go Outside.  The voiceover is replaced by a cheerful, pretty, xylophone figure as the song kicks in, but the speaker, one learns, was the Reverend Jim Jones of the People's Temple in Guyana - Jonestown, the person for whom the term "drinking the Kool-Aid" was first coined. 

Abducted is similarly subversive but uses different tactics.  In addition to a pretty tune masking dark subject matter, the song starts at a very low volume, tempting one to turn the speakers up, before the music suddenly kicks in at top volume.  I'm sure more than a couple cubicle workers had to scramble to turn the music back down as heads in the office turned toward them.

So tonight's concert will be by Cults, with the bands Spectrals and Mrs. Magician opening.  Pictures later this week.