Freak Slug

Hazy, slightly out-of-focus guitar pop made largely by one person in a bedroom has become its own tradition, and the good version of it is much harder to make than the sound implies. The trick is that everything has to feel slightly unfinished while actually being arranged very carefully. Live, with a band, those songs get a backbone they do not have on record, and the whole thing stops sounding like a private mood and starts sounding like a gig. The audience for this skews young, arrives early and takes the support acts seriously, which is not universal. Santa Ana is also a useful reminder that Orange County has a real circuit of its own rather than being a place LA bands drive through. If you have a playlist full of artists you have never seen live because they only ever seem to play Europe, start here.