Jazz, funk, pop infused brother sister duo Lawrence dazzled the crowd Thursday night at the El Rey Theatre. Although Clyde and Gracie are the only members that write the songs (they are both so much more, I’ll continue on there in a minute) they are backed by an enormously talented band consisting of a brass trio, guitarist, bassist, drummer, and second guitarist who also played auxiliary percussion. Never have I seen a guy get so excited about playing the congos before!
Most of the songs Lawrence played were off their recently released sophomore album Living Room. They started off their set with “The Heartburn Song”, one of the many groovy melodies they laid down. Gracie’s voice is just killer and whenever she let’s go, all eyes are on her. Clyde is such a boss on the keys too – they are one talented brother-sister duo!
Not only did they create Lawrence, they each have their own side projects. Clyde writes music for movies and was the youngest writer ever to be accepted into the Songwriters Guild of America at the age of six. He has written songs for movies including Miss Congeniality, one of my family’s favorites. Gracie is an accomplished actress and you can see her on the show The Americans. Oh, and she just became of legal drinking age this year.
After a couple, more tunes off the new album, they played tracks off their older albums, Breakfast and Homesick. Some of the favorites were “There Will Be More” and “So Damn Fast”. They also included unexpected jams such as Sean Paul’s “Temperature” and the Hey Arnold theme song.
With most performances you see now, there’s so many backing tracks but, with Lawrence, none of that was present as they are truly old school. Everyone in the band has their moments, even the second guitarist was shredding unbelievably hard.
Towards the end of their set, the brass trio went down into the crowd and was jamming out with the audience. I’ve seen that happen at smaller shows but not something at this size.
They practically started a conga line!
Afterwards, they were all out in the crowd talking to fans and interacting. It was nice to see them have so much fun on stage and then be such down to earth people in person. Very excited to boogie with them when they come back to LA!
Words by Steven Roston
Photos by Tim Aarons
