A funny, funky, folky Spot Night

Anne Nickoloff, Staff Reporter

Lucky Spider and St. Lucia were two very different flavors of music.

While the two members of Lucky Spider (Case Western Reserve University students and siblings Nick and Alex Pilla) touched on some folk, rap and electronic music, St. Lucia brought groovy alternative with their bigger group.

Lucky Spider opened with “Fire,” a catchy Gorillaz-meets-folk song. Nick strummed away at some strings while Alex belted out vocals.  Her singing was very beautiful, but only in her range. Perhaps she was ill or stressed with midterms, but her upper register was a weak and airy.

Later, Nick broke out some of his songs from the “CWRU Album” he created last year, including “The CWRU Song” and “Major Minorities.” These songs had people square dancing in the audience and singing along to the humorous tunes.

Both siblings ended the set with the Passon Pit-esque “Runaways.” By now, The Spot had filled with a bigger audience who clapped and jumped along to the beepy music. When Lucky Spider had finished, the crowd was asking for one more song, but it was time for St. Lucia.

“The Night Fades Away” opened their set, but even louder than their music was lead singer’s Jean-Philip Grobler’s outfit. A stark zebra print shirt clashed with his jungle-patterned pants.

Grobler’s clothes described St. Lucia’s musical style pretty accurately. Their 80’s influences, heavy synth and use of various percussion instruments created a mishmash of genres that is best defined as 80’s-electronic-meets-jungle-rock.

Just the night before their Spot Night performance, St. Lucia had opened for Two Door Cinema Club at the House of Blues. Despite this bigger show, Grobler said The Spot wasn’t that small of a venue for the band. “This stage is bigger than a lot of the ones we performed at in the past,” he said. “The audience response was great!”

Later, the band played “The Way You Remember Me” which had rocketship sounds zooming across the main beats while Grobler pressed his lips against the microphone on long “oohs.”

At the end of this song, he leaped into the air on a powerful guitar note and fell down onto his knees. This might have been an accident or it might have been out of excitement; after keys Patricia Beranek got a reassuring “I’m okay” nod from Grobler, she stuck a thumb up in the air for the audience.

The last song St. Lucia played was by far the funkiest. “September” (not the “Earth Wind & Fire” version, mind you) had a funky, repetitive electronic beat with Grobler’s high vocals coming down through the swung pace.

Spot Night just seem to be getting better and better. It’s great to see such a variety of music getting to CWRU students, and St. Lucia brought something new for campus listeners.