Matamoros, Santino Santino, Leisurely at Coco 66
Photo by Phillipe Theisse
In terms of international celebrities and onsite sexual abandon, well, not exactly, but in terms of night people who love their music and crowd the entrance like glossy, chattering birds, yes. This past Saturday night, local bands Matamoros, Santino Santino, and Leisurely each delivered strong sets, and then themselves dispersed and realigned into band/friend/fan clusters as the night went on.
Brandishing a light cream Telecaster and a throaty wail, Matamoros lead singer Jacob Morris and drummer/vocalist Matt Goldman propelled sweet garage jams into the room, like an industrial fan kicking up wind and dust in a Northside warehouse. Plenty of Morris’s notes came from high on the fret board, and Goldman’s drumming both kept time and built impressive, asymmetrical edifices to house the guitar. When Morris traded his Fender for a hollow-body Epiphone, sweet became shambolic, but the singer muscled through the mess by insistently screaming out the familiar lyric, “I just want to make love to you.” The Fender returned for the last, best song in the set, a poppier blast that saw Morris’s voice drop into a raw, raspberry tone, impressively evoking Paul Westerberg’s work in the Replacements.