The Pity Party, and other Detour parties

The Pity Party has a whirlwind weekend ahead. On Saturday, the L.A. duo will bang out an afternoon set at the LA Weekly Detour Festival -- they won an online vote to fill a local band slot -- then high-tail it to play the Eagle Rock Music Festival.

Flustered? Not the Pity Party's wisecracking female half, Heisenflei (born Julie Edwards). "We're going to have to figure out how to pace our drinking and when to take naps," she says.

But why worry about pacing now -- the duo's frenetically robotic, yelpy pop has quenched L.A. hipsters' thirst for something fresh since its January residency at the Silverlake Lounge, and Indie 103.1 (KDLD-FM) gave airplay to the single "Dronebots and Peons for Eons and Eons." The Raveonettes even chose the Pity Party for a summer tour; now the duo is finishing recording its album with Manny Nieto (Breeders, Circle Jerks).

Heisenflei teamed up with her old Buckley High classmate M (Marc Smollin) two years ago. She plays drums, sings and triggers the bass lines on a Yamaha keyboard; he provides looping guitar-scapes and vocals. The result is "angular, and a little bit weird," Heisenflei says. "People who like our music, there's something wrong with them."

The band's set-up initially drew comparisons to Quasi or the White Stripes -- "great, except they play stuff that's really catchy," she says -- but Heisenflei cites a litany of influences, including David Bowie, Brian Eno and her brother Greg's current and former bands, Autolux and Lusk.

The Pity Party's sonic anxiety seems to contradict Heisenflei's other endeavor -- she has a knitting shop in Atwater Village. "With knitting you have two needles and with drumming you have two sticks," she says. "You can hear a lot of knitting influences in our music."

Photo by Timothy Norris

Comments

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These guys suck. I've seen them walked out. The most boring experimental duo ever