Foxygen presents new album in Botanique

Like actors in their own bands. That is how Jonathan Rado and Sam France preferred to think of themselves until recently.

Listen to the albums We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic (2013) and …And Star Power (2014) and you will know exactly what they mean. The Californian indie duo learned their theatrical metamorphoses from David Bowie, and were first immersed in the flower power and mushrooms of the 1960s, and then resurrected with the glam, cocaine, and excess of the 1970s.

They often refer to the Kinks and Todd Rundgren as reference points. On the album Hang, which was released at the beginning of this year, the two friends, who have been making music together since they were fifteen, infuse their baroque rock sound with the retro romance of big bands and interbellum songwriters.

Backed by a forty-member orchestra conducted by Matthew E. White and a pristine Los Angeles studio sound, which they themselves occasionally sabotage, the result is a rather chaotic sound that blends schmaltz, vaudeville, Gershwin, Zappa, and Gram Parsons. Pastiche is never far away.

> Foxygen (+ The Big Moon). 24/02, 19.30, Botanique, Sint-Joost-ten-Node