Aero Flynn
Christopher Locke
Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing Aero Flynn play a live show.
I had just filled my belly with queso. I stumbled down the street past some dirty plaid-wearing transients sharing a large bottle of mystery liquid, past the dumpsters that reeked of week-old scraps of fried corn products, and past the 30-year-old trashy bridesmaids encouraging their friend to be promiscuous.
It was a beautiful night. The temperature was perfect, the sky was clear, and a slight breeze intermittently caressed my face. The venue had a gorgeous outdoor stage with sticky picnic tables nearby, and plenty of room for the attendees to stand around and look at their phones. There was even a big balcony for pseudo-rebels who wanted to hang out over the crowd and smoke reefers.
Unfortunately, the show was not set up on the outdoor stage. The band was setting up on the indoor stage behind the bar. As I walked past the bar, I noticed the night's special drink was some artisanal hand-squeezed lemon juice cocktail, which required the bartender to spend roughly 35 minutes manhandling lemon halves every time someone ordered it. Meanwhile, 200 pretentious flannel-wearing neckbeards waited for their cans of PBR and checked Instagram.
Anyway, once I got to the area closest to the stage, I realized only about a dozen people were going to be able to watch the show, and that was OK with me. The stage was just big enough for the 3-man group to stand on without touching elbows. Man, I wish there had been that much space on the floor where I was standing.
The show began with a 50Hz buzz of loose connections and cheap equipment. The band played most of the songs from their album, while the sound man struggled with the knobs on the board. The crowd continued to talk throughout the show, pausing to awkwardly applaud at the wrong times. There was too much guitar and not enough drums. There were too many cell phones, and not enough Diet Coke.
And when the show was over and I turned to leave, I realized those unwashed transients I had seen earlier weren't homeless. They were fans.
Aero Flynn has put together a hell of an album! I've listened to it about 100 times, and it's still good. It's like in middle school when you spend all day Sunday thoughtfully putting together a track list for a mixtape, making sure each song flows properly into the next, setting the mood for whatever you need. This album is like that. It's hard to point out which songs are the best, because each is improved drastically by the context of the other tracks on the album.
If you mixed 4 parts Radiohead, 1 part Mumford and Sons, 1 part Sufjan Stevens, and threw in a dash of the soundtrack from the shower scene in "Psycho", you would get close to the atmosphere of this album.
Buy the album. It's phenomenal.