Add Wand to the list of bands best realized as a live act. Not to disrespect their two most recent albums, this year’s Golem and last year’s Ganglion Reef, both fine efforts in the lazily-named “garage-psych” canon that add the band’s wizards-and-warlocks imagery to the mix of guitar pyrotechnics and punk urgency that characterize, to some degree, the efforts of regular tourmate Ty Segall and others. Heard in the vacuum of headphones or home speakers, alone, it’s too easy to lump them in with the other bands whose names you know and move on.
But live, there are clearer nods to the band’s actual influences: Rainbow, T. Rex, Bowie, early period Zeppelin — some of the bands that influenced the much-derided L.A. “glam” scene of the 1980s. Wand owe a very much larger debt to these bands than their contemporaries, and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the glammy sensibility Wand brings to the table serves as a reminder that the wholesale death of the L.A. scene at the hands of grunge was a bit of a throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. If those seventies touchstones can be blamed for giving us Poison and Warrant, it’s worth remembering that the better attitudes they embodied were being unafraid to have style or show off how well you can play, and to make each performance a true performance. Wand may not wear makeup or tight clothing, but their show brings with it some of that theatrical feel that makes them stand out.
The Fat Angel Sings 