Kevin Bronson on November 8th, 2014

0

It was somehow appropriate on Friday night that YACHT’s christening of the new Regent Theater amounted to something of a disco exorcism.

The long-downtrodden venue in downtown’s Old Bank District – a grindhouse for years, and then an adult cinema before shuttering in 2000 – weathered months of construction delays before Friday’s reopening under a new group headed by Spaceland Presents’ Mitchell Frank. Despite some predictable opening-night hiccups (engineers tweaking the room’s “boom-y” sound system, long lines at bars), the 1,100-capacity theater, which was virtually full, got generally good reviews, especially for its sight lines, mezzanine level and the myriad nooks and crannies in which patrons mingled at bar tables.

The Regent could hardly have asked for a more entertaining headliner on opening night than YACHT, the L.A.-based electronic outfit built around the duo of Jona
Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans and now including the creative energies of Bobby Birdman (Rob Kieswetter) and Jeffrey Brodsky, the latter pair having collaborated on the songwriting on the new EP “Where Does This Disco? (out next week).

YACHT are a conceptual band whose creative tendrils transcend music, extending to fashion, social media (they have an app) and writing. Their contextual domain encompasses areas such as spirituality, technology, mysticism and art, sometimes with a dead-serious intellectual bent, sometimes absurdist and sometimes blurring the line between the two. On Friday, even absent their usual light show and yellow triangle iconography, YACHT’s disco catharsis proved exhilarating.

Dressed in workout garb emblazoned with “TOM BOY,” the long-limbed Evans gave a performance that was aerobic, erotic and challenging. “Do any of you have any complaints you want to air out right now?” she asked the crowd early in the set. “We’re allowing the airing of three grievances.”

The first respondent copped to hating the comments on YouTube videos. (Laughter.) Tennessee went back in time on abortion, cried somebody else. “Corporate America!” shouted a third person. Then Evans asked everybody “to project all your energy into a collective ‘F*ck you!'” Pause. “One, two three …” she said before leading the chorus: “F*ck you!”

“That feels good, doesn’t it?” she added.

So did the music, which recalls agitators like Talking Heads, the B-52’s and Tom Tom Club. Evans cavorted in the crowd during “Afterlife,” strutted her best moves during songs such as “Dystopia,” “Plastic Soul” and the new “Where Does this Disco?” and with her band mates turned the audience into a bouncing mass of bodies during the encore “Utopia,” wrapping the 65-minute set in exuberant fashion.

[Still feeling it afterwards, Bechtolt and Evans even got their portrait taken in the men’s room, which is decorated, with a wink to the theater’s history as a porn house, with vintage covers of smut mags, top photo.]

Experimental electronic solo artist Jerome LOL preceded YACHT with a set of ambient music that got tedious for everybody except the few who dig seeing a guy fiddle with a sequencer, strum a little guitar and dispense over-processed vocals. Beginners’ synth- and guitar-pop was more in keeping with the celebratory vibe; fronting the five-piece, singer Samantha Barbera valiantly soared over her band’s wall of sound, with the crowd responding to the singles “Ever Love” and “Who Knows.”

||| Live: The Downtown Festival continues tonight at the Regent with Connan Mockasin, Lydia Ainsworth, Corners and Mr. Elevator & the Brian Hotel.

Photos by Carl Pocket, courtesy of Spaceland Presents