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Things happen, then they don’t. Birds come, then they go. White Magic came, then they went. White Magic came to The Echo Saturday, November 24th…late at night. I will say right off the bat, that The Echo was pretty packed, and was packed the entire time for their set even though they didn’t finish apparently until 1:30am (I went home half way through because I’m old). Ill be honest, it’s hard to say what I thought about what I saw of their set. The amount of time it took for them to arrive, set up and play, was just too long. They started to put their gear on stage at 11pm, and by the time they actually started playing it was 12:30am. They weren’t even having technical difficulties it seemed…the bassist didn’t have a tuner, so he had to tune several times with the keyboardist/singer, Mira Billotte, who’s keyboard was being weird and transposing itself differently (total guess), then they meandered, then went into a worm hole, then came back, then didn’t? I was annoyed and tired by the time they went on and felt a bit biased as a result, but people were into it and they seemed to have some avid fans.

For those who don’t know White Magic, they are a Drag City band from Brooklyn, New York. They kind of reminded me of Fiona Apple making a witches brew in her basement…except Fiona Apple does that already, so maybe they just join her. Their songs will sometimes go a little more on the “avaunt guard” side with yelping such as in a song called “The Light”, but can turn it the other way and go lighter with an acoustic number like in the song “Katie Cruel”. Most the songs I noticed kept it simple and were very straight forward all the way through. The guitarist did some interesting noise stuff on a few songs, and was passing a bottle of Jameson around, so that made Dane Sundseth feel better about life and the band. As a whole they are a decent band and doing their thing, but it also comes down to if you are into that style of music. If you are into that darker female singer songwriter thing at all, perhaps you can join them in their mysterious multi-dimension universe where time doesn’t exist and Jameson becomes the only source of nourishment…oh no wait, The Hold Steady already own that dimension.

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End Scene,
Dan Tana