Photos: Nite Jewel Ditches Dancey Pop Tunes at XP

XP was 'xtra packed last night for the latest offering from Split Works, Nite Jewel, Ramona Gonzalez’s fusion synth pop project born out of the same circle of Angelenos that bred Ariel Pink and friends. Growing up on a balanced diet of Aaliyah, R. Kelly, avant garde, and 1980s synthesizer goofs, Nite Jewel’s records are sometimes smooth, sometimes danceable, and sometimes smooth and danceable, guided by R&B melodies, drum machines, and layers of synth.

For her China tour, Gonzalez is playing solo. She has dropped her touring band and is backed by projections of dancing silhouettes in their stead. Her weapons of choice are a single synthesizer, a drum machine pad, and her distinctive, but indecipherable voice.

After having to urge the audience to fill in the empty pit, the show began with “Let’s Go (The Two of Us Together).” It was immediately clear Beijing was not going to be given the Nite Jewel that YouTube and Soundcloud promised us. The decision to leave her band at home required Gonzalez to give up trying to reproduce the sound on her albums. What XP was left with was once dancey pop songs transformed into atmospheric ballads, and a crowd that was more interested in their side conversations and gin and tonics than the stage. “This crowd seems like a drinking crowd. Gangbei! I said that right, right?” It was genuinely disappointing to hear her bubbly hit “One Second of Love” reduced to a dragging crooner.

Somewhere around the show’s midpoint, we were told that we were listening to some new songs. “Nowhere to Go” (if you have GTA V, steal a car now and give it a listen) woke up the crowd’s lazy legs, but as “This Story” was playing us out, we all just wanted to sit down.

Photos: Kristina Parchomchuk