Photos by Pamela Garcia Aguirre // Written by Mark E. Ortega //

Broods with Meg Myers, Max and The Moon //
The Independent – San Francisco
May 13th, 2014 //

Tuesday night, burgeoning singer/songwriter Meg Myers played her first gig at The Independent in SF as she set the stage for brother-sister New Zealand synthpop duo Broods later that evening.
 
Myers took the stage in what seemed to be one of those low cut H&M black t-shirts and a pair of shorts that were short enough to where some questioned whether she was wearing any at all. The only noticeable bit of color being her red lipstick, Myers delivered a heartwrenching eight-song set that highlighted her vocal range and her capturing stage presence.

Myers opened the show with “Adelaide”, a dark song with an infectious melody that gets stuck in your brain quickly. The hook “I don’t wanna cry about it / I don’t wanna fight about it / I just gotta let go, I just gotta let go” sounds almost out of a Taylor Swift chart-topper, but Myers delivers it with a different kind of angst than Swift ever could manage.

Myers showed range as she tackled an assortment of difficult songs to sing. “Make a Shadow” sounds like it could’ve been written for Dolores O’Riordan during the heyday of The Cranberries. Myers delivered gut punches one after another with songs like “Say Nothing”, “Monster”, “Desire”, and “Curbstomp”.

“Desire” helped land Myers in my top five female vocalist uses of the word “fuck” with the line “Baby, I wanna fuck you / I wanna feel you in my bones”, which had both male and female crowd members swooning.

Myers closed her set emphatically with the extremely demanding “Heart Heart Head”, which builds to Myers screaming the song’s chorus “You’re in my heart, in my heart, in my head” before finally letting loose with a series of screams that brought the passionate and dark performance to a close.

New Zealand sibling synth-pop group Broods delivered a brief but catchy set as they begin to close their North American tour.

With the emergence of young talent Lorde from the region, others have been looking to New Zealand for any similarly talented musicians with the kind of command and ceiling that Lorde has shown in the past 12 to 18 months.

A few years senior to Lorde at 19 years of age, Georgia Notts showed there’s hope for her and brother Caleb Nott to achieve that level of success yet on Tuesday night. With a variety of ballad-type songs as well as tracks that had a large portion of The Indy making use of what little space they had at the sold out show to dance, Broods is definitely a band on the rise.

Comparisons between Georgia and singer Imogen Heap have been made for good reason. The song “Sleep Baby Sleep” sounds right out of the British singer’s catalog. The ballady “Taking You There” sounds like a stripped down Of Monsters and Men song in the best way and shows a different element to their sound than the dance songs that first brought most people’s attention to Broods.

Thrilled and at times seemingly dumbfounded at the reality of a sold out crowd in San Francisco, it was obvious that Broods were enjoying every moment of their 12-song set. They fed off the audience and Georgia seemed to make it a point especially to connect with as many audience members as she could, flashing her eyes at them while belting out their set.

Broods closed their set with “Bridges”, easily their most recognizable tune at the moment. “And we’re burning all the bridges, watching them go up in flames”, sang Georgia. On this night, bridges were only built as Broods established they have a solid fan base in the Bay Area already.

Meg Myers