MAGIC CITY HIPPIES
Magic City Hippies make music that is comic-book-colorful and drunk-walk woozy - with just enough depth to cool your feet in beneath a sweltering autotune sun.
Fronted by the charismatic Robby Hunter, Magic City Hippies deliver highly danceable funk music that touches upon rock, reggae, indie and hip-hop with startlingly sophisticated production. The 5-piece departed their eponymous home this winter in support of their debut LP, Modern Animal, and having never forgotten the 110% given during their last Portland date, Bump made sure to get up front.
While a gray day in Portland blackened to a cold night, pink and teal neon greeted a nearly-sold-out crowd within the walls of the Wonder Ballroom.
Modern Animal opens with sun-drunk swagger, Ratatat-esque guitar shining chrome amidst crunchy, laid back drums on Spice. Silhouetted in their best 80’s Miami neon glow, guitarist John and key player Ferny unsheathed slick pop melodies that swerved into bluesy corners and down funky side streets at unexpected moments, adding a 3-dimensionality that belies their candy coating.
Indiana showcases bandleader Robby Hunter’s ever-changing vocal talent. Channeling a slinking hip-hop flow somewhere between Anthony Kiedis and Beck, Hunter snarls and purrs from rhyme to rhyme before splashing autotune over an urgent, breathless falsetto that scrapes the ceiling on a wave of punchy synth and fuzzy guitars. Garage, funk and blues shuffle together in a colorful bloc party that sets eyes to closing and asses to shaking,
Collisions continue in the crowd and amongst genres as buttery autotune lubricates lyrics that don’t always match the sunny backdrop. My favorite track on the LP, Franny, exists an agonizing arm’s length from a love that only calls to pick up weed in a baggie, a different man in the Cadillac every time. Love ends and romances pursued on tour come at a cost - lives restart when not anchored to one place, and relentless touring has kept the Magic City Hippies out of the Magic City long enough to incur some damage.
Melancholy does find the surface a few more times - a swirling nebula marks the breakdown in Float, fragmented guitars scraping against cosmic debris in a warm synthesizer void - but so do lighter pockets of ocean breeze and marijuana smoke. Kamikaze introduces autotune and a lazy electric guitar solo to reggae for a blissful dismissal of responsibilities and self consciousness, while Body Like a Weapon is a sleek, bass-snapping ode to the female form that wastes no breath on subtlety; lounge-y and reminiscent of Daft Punk’s most seductive tracks. Through this sonic safari glossy production and a whole evolutionary chain of guitar and vocal effects keep Modern Animal consistent enough to listen to back to back to back.
While the album does slow down in the last third for more tender pieces like Gunslingers and The Wind, nothing of the sort takes place on stage with the Hippies. Pure passion and an infectious confidence flood the Wonder more thickly than the neon during two incredible covers - the sunny Anderson .Paak jam Make It Better has everyone singing and snapping, but when the first notes of Travis Scott’s Goosebumps waver into the air during the final song of the encore the room instantly fills with pumping firsts and flying hair. Hunter throws a double handful of grit into his delivery, leading us all in the irreplaceable Brrr Brrr BRRR! before leaning way back to give the chorus everything he has. I had already coatchecked my camera at this point in the night, but sprinted to record such an impressive display of cross-genre-pollination.
Magic City Hippies are great recorded - Modern Animal will be on repeat through the winter and resting easy in the chamber for summer days along the water - but their live show is another beast all together. While their sound may fit the beach as well as the nightclub, the band’s musicianship is undeniably polished, their synergy dialed in and their stage antics intoxicating. The band wraps their North American tour on April 23rd back in Florida - catch them if you can.
As always, thanks for reading! Keep it funky.
