When the weekend's over: Rupa & The April Fishes
Like everyone else, we here at Pop & Hiss Headquarters have started counting down until the sweet, sweet embrace of the weekend overtakes us all. But Monday is far closer than we'd like to think, and with so many venues going dark that day, the weekend hangover just hits that much harder.
Luckily, San Francisco-based Rupa & The April Fishes are playing the Roxy the 20th, so there's a good chance you'll be able to recapture a little carefree energy for a couple of hours. They caught my ear when they opened for fellow global-minded fusionists DeVotchka at the El Rey last month, and chances are, the uncontrolled and vaguely celebratory energy they showed onstage is only going to be amplified in a tiny, sweaty club.
French, Latin and any number of gypsy-adjacent influences course through their mix with a pleasantly "San Franciscan" kind of flourish, and it wasn't just the light Nag Champa smell I noticed coursing through the El Rey last month. Watching them perform is a little like riding with the top down in a double-decker bus, careening through seven or eight crowded ethnic neighborhoods, each one in the middle of a massive street party. Suddenly, Monday doesn't sound too bad, does it?
-Chris Barton
(See below for a video of Rupa & The April Fishes' Parisian cafe-ready "Une americaine a Paris.")
Photo by Judith Burrows
