Assessment | An Adventurous Jungle Experience on the Santa Barbara Bowl

Each live performance has its personal distinctive rhythm, and after experiencing what my husband affectionately dubbed “the grey scorching summer season” of live shows with James Taylor, Neil Younger, Peter Frampton, Graham Nash, and the like, the autumn’s first present on the Santa Barbara Bowl had a decidedly completely different vibe.

Jungle — the British duo of Tom McFarland (see my interview right here) and Joshua Lloyd-Watson and their merry tribe of revolving visitor musicians — got here out to the Bowl on September 6 with a joyfully youthful mission: to play and have enjoyable. 

The fortunately fluid, musical-chair-hopping crowd (I’ve by no means seen a lot motion between seats earlier than) was there to bop their heads and wave their arms and easily let the music envelop them, pageant model. The mass of swirling our bodies and clouds of pot smoke took me again to a different period — the music, nevertheless, was decidedly fashionable. 

For concertgoers who’re cynical in regards to the viability and vitality of seeing digital dance music carried out dwell, I can confirm that within the case of Jungle, it undoubtedly works. 

The grooves started with a rousing “Us Towards the World,” and saved up the tremendous excessive power as they flowed into “Candle Flame,” that includes Erick The Architect in a background display screen projection that was surprisingly efficient. The video for that music has such nice choreography by Shay Latukolan that I wasn’t positive how it could come off dwell, nevertheless it was nonetheless a crowd pleaser, regardless of the lacking dancers. (Try the strikes on “Again on 74” for much more dance social gathering marvelousness.) Along with the video vocals, there have been six musicians dwell on stage, with drums, samplers, synthesizers, keyboards, guitars, and percussion devices all used extensively. 

The entire present was actually its personal type of nu-disco digital funk dance social gathering, with the band’s silhouettes swaying in opposition to a mixture of smoky haze and a dynamic gentle present of principally pink and orange tones, with an occasional disco ball thrown in for good measure.  

On keyboards and vocals (together with McFarland and Lloyd-Watson), Lydia Kitto jumped in with an infectious enthusiasm on an assortment of songs each new and previous, together with “The Warmth,” “Heavy, California,” and “Again on 74,” with one other rapper, Bas, featured by way of background display screen video on “Romeo.” From the 2018 music “Comfortable Man” to “Holding On” and “You Ain’t No Superstar” from their August 2023 album Volcano, the group by no means stopped transferring and swaying with the wave of sound, getting misplaced within the energy of the music. 

When throughout the encore, McFarland informed the group, “I want you to go fucking bonkers with us on this subsequent music,” as an intro to the 2021 launch “What D’You Know About Me,” he hardly wanted to to induce them on. This Jungle was already a giant undulating mass of enjoyable, and I used to be joyful to be alongside for the trip.