Initially, it seemed as if the Electric Blankets were a vanity project and a party band designed to alleviate the ultra-seriousness of their members’ parent groups, the Provocative Whites and the Ghost of 505. They fashioned themselves as a guaranteed good time, like Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs. Two years and one single later, the Electric Blankets leave the ’60s behind and emerge as the e-cigarette of rock ‘n’ roll with Vehicles: a shy hipster party at the bar.
What this amounts to and fulfills is the heretofore unknown need of a Smiths for the Fourth Avenue crowd, and it turns out to be a great time. The first audible sound on the six-song Vehicles EP is Raul Michel confessing to a payphone, “faking it so long that I forgot who I was when I single!,” leading into the Johnny Marr guitar heroics that in tandem complete the Electric Blankets’ definitive, and also greatest, song, “Drive Dive Die.” All the hits are here: the stomping “First Song,” the winsome “San Francisco,” and what will hopefully be the theme to The Breakfast Club, Part 2, “Dirty Prayers.”
The two-part dramatic set piece “Summer Dress/Untitled” completes Vehicles‘ cycle of your gain from their pain. The Electric Blankets wouldn’t want it any other way.
This article appears in May 2-8, 2013.
I just stopped by the Rialto to get tickets for this and they don’t have them. No one seems to have them. Any reference to tickets points to the Rialto. More than a little frustrating to say the least.
Hey Ldonyo — I just called over to the Rialto Box Office, and apparently tickets are only being sold at the door tomorrow night, nothing in advance.
Thanks, David! It’s a bit odd that it say $6 advance on Rialto’s event info page for the show, although it could just be me thinking it odd.
FWIW, tickets are also buy-one-get-one-free with a KFMA Day ticket stub.