As soon as they got on stage, ear made a shockwave by their mere presence. They seemed completely out of place and spoke with a nervous vulnerability which evoked questions about when the last time they left their room was. But that form of sincerity is precisely what made them a stand-out act.
The music began and everything fell into place. Unnerving, spontaneous, and bubbling with optimism, ear disarmed the festival-goer’s self-preservation reflex by generously sharing what might have been deemed unpolished. Most of their songs sounded like demos in the best way, often ending in a clumsy end of phrase, or by Jonah Paz simply skipping the track on his laptop. “Ok, this one’s called ‘Nerves,’ you can also dance to this if you want.”
They made it a point to coyly talk about every song before jumping into an uncontrolled thrashing that looked like Ian Curtis repeatedly getting punched in the stomach. For two rather awkward figures, they sure could entertain.
The now not-so-niche band came up quickly, but it wasn’t so much by self-promotion or luck as it was by their uncompromising sound and aesthetic. They could be compared in some ways to Crystal Castles or even MGMT, but their influences are more self-contained to the chemistry formed between the pair. Both come from respective musical backgrounds in folk and EDM, and there is a strong tension to draw from in their music. But more importantly, there is a feeling of all-seeing depth to their approach. A meta-dimension that is neither rooted in irony nor in self-proclamations of genius, one that is just there, looming in the corner of the dancefloor.
Even in the large crowd that had gathered, the intimacy that ear provoked made it feel like we were all suddenly together. This makes it easily my favourite discovery from this lineup, if not of the year. And if I knew ear before by scrolling through their album The Most Dear and The Future, the duo is now etched into my memory forever. ear summer?
