The “Awkward” Sounds of San Cisco

It’s amazing how often things that shouldn’t work together do. For example, as a true Australian, I love Vegemite and cheese— don’t try this at home, folks. This love, however, is intellectually counterintuitive; Vegemite should not be loved in conjunction with anything (to be honest, the thought of Vegemite by itself is, in a word, “vomitous”). On the other hand, unlike the erstwhile Vegemite, Western Australian vocalists Scarlett Stevens of The Flairz and Jordi Davieson of The Real Life Animators have never been considered vomitous. Together, fronting their unholy musical lovechild San Cisco, these two remarkable vocalists are even less vomitous than they are separately— in fact, the band is really very good. However, the fusion of Stevens’ and Davieson’s vocal stylings is not the unusual combination that makes San Cisco what it is; both The Real Life Animators and The Flairz are lo-fi bastions of the Fremantle garage rock scene, and in a country as small as Australia, cross pollination between the two bands was practically inevitable. Instead, it is the introduction of minimalistic, energetic, poppy riffs to Davieson’s stringent, keening vocals that makes San Cisco a liminal musical force.

In the first single of their second EP Awkward, Stevens accompanies Davieson with a remarkably clean and entirely deadpan melody, performed almost as if it’s a spoken word piece and entirely appropriate to the conventions of the The Concretes-meets-Architecture in Helsinki-esque feel this band has espoused. The marriage of Davieson’s The Kooks-inspired earnestness and Stevens’ stony languor is so convincing that it takes several listens to realize how incredibly full of humour Awkward is. But the song is very funny, and the band, with a foot in two divergent musical places, sounds polished. San Cisco is strange but it works— like Vegemite and cheese.  

The Awkward EP comes out on iTunes on February 3rd.

- Sumi Naidoo, Long Skirt, Short Jacket (Fridays from 2-4pm @ WQHS.org)