Sometimes a
band comes around that makes me feel like a kid again. In
the way that I experience the same wonderment I felt when I
first started to discover the sounds of the underground.
When finding The Ramones End of The Century in
my stepsister's record collection was the kind of discovery
that could change the entire course of my life. To this day,
rock and roll remains the most exciting thing I've ever
encountered in this world, and I'm excited about The Sess
(pronounced Se-sh).
Last Sunday
I popped into The Pink Elephant in North Park to
catch a matinee show that had caught my interest upon the
recommendation of the two people who have turned me onto
more awesome music than anyone or anything else in my life.
The Sess took the stage and they took me by surprise,
bursting straight out of the cacophonous swirl of warm up
noise straight into a tight, spectacular, harmonious
powerpop blitzkreig that had me grinning and bouncing on my
toes. I was frantic with excitement. Discovery!
The San Diego quintet isn't
trying to reinvent rock and roll and yet their honest
interpretation of it has a freshness that gives their
music a unique sound. I kept feeling like I was hearing
something familiar, but there was no distinct derivation
in it. The music was simply evocative of the feeling one
gets when they hear music that's amazing and perfect. Like
discovering The Saints's Eternally Yours,
Jonathan Fire Eater's Wolf Songs for Lambs,
Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets, Sonic
Youth's Daydream Nation, or Thin Lizzy's
Jailbreak for the first time. I thought, "This shit
is genius."
Or is it?
The music
is definitely devoid of pretense. And I don't think The Sess
are even caught up in caring if their music is genius or
not. I think they're just happy writing honest, catchy rock
and roll that feels good to play, because it feels right.
I wonder if this band knows
just how good they are, or if they mask this knowledge
with a guise of humbleness that makes them that much more
appealing. After experiencing their show I was enamored. I
wanted to meet them, to make sure they know just how
important what they're doing is to people like me who make
rock and roll their religion. I must have come across like
some starstruck teenage girl, a potential obsessed fan
turned stalker. Their set was like a shot of pure
adrenaline to me and I was bouncing off the walls.
With a band like The Sess, it's as if they're tapped into
some secret something that most bands, sadly, will never
realize. They are enlightened. They're in the club.
~Billy
Druid
San Diego,
9/15/07
The Sess have recently released a seven inch
record on
Single Screen Records.
http://myspace.com/thesess
http://www.myspace.com/singlescreenrecords
