These days, countless songs and sounds are made or produced electronically, but it really wasn’t that long ago that a huge number of music listeners at large turned their noses up at electronic and synthetic sounds, decrying them as less legitimate, less soulful, less real. Those listeners had likely not yet heard double headliners like Little Dragon and Glass Animals, the electronic music innovators who will charge up the S.B. Bowl on Saturday, April 22, with psychedelic Australian act Jagwar Ma supporting.
With some of the most soulful and sensual synthetic sounds since the ’70s, yet with an edge and sensitivity that makes them thrillingly of the moment and progressive, Gothenburg’s Little Dragon has emerged as one of the most compelling dance and electronic music bands of the last decade. They will heat up the night with Oxford’s Glass Animals, who continue the legacy of their home ’shire’s most famous band, Radiohead, with arrestingly groovy, dark music matching electric guitar with inventive percussion, synth-y soundscapes, and earworm choruses.
Few recently formed electronic-rock/indie-rock acts are currently as big as Glass Animals, who visited Santa Barbara at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in 2015. They released their second studio album, How to Be a Human Being, last year to instant acclaim. The album debuted in the top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart and was featured as one of U.S.A. Today’s “10 Best Albums of 2016,” as well as Under the Radar’s “Top 100 Albums of 2016,” and NPR named the single “Life Itself” as a song they could not stop playing. Though the security line to see them two years ago was infamously and torturously long, their hotly energized performance seemed antidote enough for the roaring crowd.