Photo: Patrick Green
These days you aren’t anybody until you’ve played Pappy and Harriets. The former biker bar located in Pioneertown, California (near Joshua Tree) has become a not-so secret hidden gem where A-list acts like Paul McCartney, Queens of the Stone Age and Vampire Weekend have played “surprise shows” mainly in-between festival gigs.
This past Thursday night it was Little Dragon’s turn. The outdoor desert oasis was the ideal launching pad for the Swedish quartet to share new songs off their just released fifth album, Season High.
Also: Take A Long Drinkee Of Sofi Tukker
Little Dragon frontwoman Yukimi Nagano is a guiding light who navigates fans through the band’s cosmic space jams, which expertly bend time and space with such precision and skill that one can get lost in the future and past of dance-pop-disco-house-psychedelia, until she reels you back onto the dance floor.
Photo: Patrick Green
Little Dragon sprinkled in crowd favorites (“Ritual Union” “Pretty Girls”, “Klapp Klapp”) among new songs (“Sweet”, “Pop Life”, “Strobe Light”) off of Season High that had a retro 90s sexy funk groove — think if Sade fronted Prince’s The New Power Generation in a parallel universe.
Photo: Patrick Green
Crave favorite Sofi Tukker opened the night with their feel-good electro-dance pop that helped earn them a 2016 Grammy nomination.
Photo: Patrick Green
The two college classmates turned yin and yang bandmates look like they’re having such a good time performing that the late-arriving crowd couldn’t help joining in on the frivolous fun as the two worked the stage and crowd like a musical version of The Wonder Twins.
