Original publishing via KUCI 88.9fm
For the down and out, Coast Modern’s debut tour was a rejuvenating experience. Three different lifestyles blended together on Saturday, April 21, as The Palms and Mikey Mike accompanied the pop group for a night of laughs and carefree dancing. For three hours, teenagers and college students alike, with a desire to escape from their day-to-day routines, swayed to the allure of psychedelic and electro beats.
The Palms opened the night’s set of performances with some crowd favorites like “Levitate” off their 2017 album, “Mulholland Dr.” The band’s uplifting combination of folk and West Coast psychedelia attracted a variety of people who had one thing in common: chino shorts. Groups of tall dudes wearing strapback dad hats held onto their shorter, sunkissed sweethearts under the rainbow LED lights shining above. Soon after, Mikey Mike heated things up, literally, with a risqué show featuring a “spin-the-wheel” of assorted tasks.
The Palms were definitely more tame and much easier to sing with, but Mikey Mikey created an attitude of relatability that the audience vibed with. As he began to rap, I noticed that the crowd adopted an entirely new personality. The room that was once filled with an airy hopefulness became replaced by longing and frustration. Individuals cried out in harmony with the music, “I wanna be happy, I wanna be free, f**k what they say, I’m doing me.” In between songs, Mikey Mike invited onto the stage two audience members and asked them to spin a wheel of dares; the first lit his chest hair on fire, while the second drank liquor from his freshly worn shoe. Throughout his performance he joked with the crowd, saying his look was a combination of “Charles Manson and Jesus”. He reminded me of a version of Father John Misty who toughed it out on LA’s streets instead of drinking wine in Europe. Overall, the act was filled with laughter that blended into Coast Modern’s performance.
The dimly lit room tried to contain all of the anxious anticipation from the crowd as smoke rose from below; everyone cheered, blue light pouring over the band as they skipped onstage. Luke Atlas and Coleman Trapp spent the rest of the night gliding across the stage and leaning into the waves of hands reaching upwards. The group not only performed a variety of songs off their debut album, but also freestyled spontaneously to a beat that they asked the crowd to create. In their transition to “Hollow Life” – their first single – Luke spoke out to everyone about exposing phoniness and being better for those around us, mainly our significant others. The concert was complete when a random person, at the end, climbed onstage and crowd surfed with the encouragement of the band. All in all, Coast Modern’s debut concert was an entire package that left everyone wanting more.
Tune in to The Vault: https://thevault889.kuci.org/ and kuci.org