Playlist Rewind: Rx Bandits at the TLA

The Rx Bandits (MySpace and Twitter) played at the Theater of the Livings Arts on South Street on Wednesday. They're touring in support of their new record, Mandala (iTunes / Amazon).

The songs on this offering skew more toward straight-out rock than their previous efforts. But don't let the absence of horns on Mandala fool you: they still owe a great deal of their sound to the reggae and ska influences that played so prominently in their past records.

Wednesday night they showed off their career-spanning mastery of the jarring time signature change. In particular "Hope is a butterfly[...]" darts back and forth between staccato guitar riffs and climbing melodies.

Tunes like "Hearts That Hanker For Mistake" slow it down and lull you into a false sense of comfort before blasting out their chorus. This is nothing new to the Rx Bandits, but they have perfected their timing on this effort.

And the Spanish-versed "Mientras La Veo Soñar" is one of the best examples of their embrace of synthesizers. Lead guitarist Steve Choi (who had good words for Philly on his Twitter account) is also a talented keyboardist and moves between the instruments several times in some songs.

And speaking of moving between instruments, at one point during the show it seemed like almost everyone on the stage was playing a drum kit of some kind. Tim Arnold, the drummer of Good Old War, even took to some sticks, joining the Bandits in a cacophonous drum circle that somehow maintained both unpredictability and cohesion. It was one of the better moments of the show.

But perhaps the best moment belonged to the audience.

Instead of chanting the mandatory "encore" at the end of the Bandits' main set, the crowd started singing the words to "Overcome (The Recapitulation)," a song from their album The Resignation about disillusionment with a war-mongering government and the hope for peace—a particularly relevant topic these days.

But they didn't stop at the first verse—they were halfway through the song when the band came back out on stage and took over. It was a great scene to watch. Some cities may shout for an encore, but in Philly, if you don't give us the song we want, we'll just do it ourselves.

Image by the author.