What it was like
A sousaphone, a theremin and a bouzouki walk onto a stage on Cedros Avenue, and somehow what comes out sounds like a traveling circus performing in a cathedral while the world ends outside. Nick Urata sings in a tenor that carries the weight of Eastern European folk, Latin bolero, and punk rock all at once, and the band plays instruments that most rock acts have never heard of — sousaphone, theremin, bouzouki — as if they were born with them in their hands. The result is a sound that belongs to no genre and every continent, the kind of thing that makes you realize how small the word indie is when applied to a band whose influences stretch from a Balkan wedding reception to a Mexican cinema. At the intimate North County venue on Cedros, the sound wraps around you like a blanket sewn from every country you have never visited, and you leave knowing that the word eclectic was invented for exactly this. Tuesday, September 30, at 8 PM.