Live: The Mynabirds, Deep Time @ The Satellite, 7.31.12

Before last night, I don’t think I’d been to a show since the Beach Boys at the Hollywood Bowl almost two months ago. It’s easy to forget the simple pleasure of returning to a dark, familiar room, especially one with improved craft beer options, to hear music being played from the stage instead of the cloud; the Satellite jogged my memory. (The Yeti Imperial Stouts helped, at least at first.) The evening opened with Pony Boy, a local act that did their best, er, most competent Alabama Shakes impression before Hardly Art duo Deep Time took the stage.

In most recent guitar/drums duos, it’s the frontman or woman who fills in the rhythm section’s missing heft with the weight of charisma; in Deep Time, drummer Adam Jones is the bigger draw. He plays with gymnast’s sense of movement, strong and quick but never forceful. Jennifer Moore skips Jack White-style guitar demagoguery in favor of a minimalist approach to both melody and instrumentation — it’s compelling in its bareness when the songs hit the right BPM, but it also leaves the band sounding like half a Grass Widow. The Mynabirds, though, were on a good mixture. As they did at our unofficial SXSW party in March, the Omaha-based group delivered a slow-burning pour of blues, rock and soul, Creedence Clearwater revisited from beneath a spirit hood. Such is the headgear of our time — credit to the band for skipping the RAGE t-shirts.