I really wish St. Louis could have given the Detroit duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. a better ending to their tour, but their set at PLAY:stl10 threw a few kinks at the band. To be clear, DEJJ did nothing wrong. Many were impressed with electronic pop that sounds something like The Postal Service meets Motown meets folk meets The Beach Boys meets NASCAR. They even did a fantastic cover of “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys, which is always an immediate way to my heart.
Unfortunately their laid back electro-jams seemed oddly placed after the high-energy stage antics of The Poison Control Center, and to make things worse, Progress In Color (who followed DEJJ) awkwardly came in mid-set to stack their gear in front of the stage, keeping listeners at a distance and disrupting any intimacy the duo was trying to build. Thankfully, the tunes of DEJJ blissfully float and penetrate such obstacles, always reaching their intended target, whether to mesmerize you into nodding your head or warming your heart. Their song “Nothing But Our Love” ends with a line about how we sometimes get more than what we deserve. I felt like that last night; we definitely didn’t deserve a great set by DEJJ, but they certainly treated us to one.
More pics and talk after the jump:
