Friday Night Lights

(Hot Lava at The Boot, Toggle Switch photo)

There's much to report from Friday night's indie-pop extravaganza at The Boot, but here's the executive summary: It was a great, enlightening, entertaining evening of music.
Roanoke's Sad Cobras opened the show -- and I regrettably missed their first two songs. But what followed was almost all new music. The only tune the band played from their "No More Graves" album was "Bodycast." The new tunes struck me as a bit more somber than the most buoyant moments from the album. An exception was the set-ending "Blue Kettle," a new song that I can't wait to hear again.
Hot Lava's live set was much more straight-forward than what's heard on the "Lavalogy" CD. On stage, the band left behind most of the arty low-fi noise, which brought the focus on the Lava's sugary melodies and singer-guitarist Allison Apperson's lovely voice. I'm addicted to the CD -- which I just got my paws on last week -- but the Lava's live show sealed the deal for me. They're officially one of my favorite Virginia bands.
In some ways, we in Hampton Roads get to claim them as our own. Allison told me Friday that she's from Williamsburg -- a graduate of Lafayette High School. Keyboard dude Matt Deans is from Portsmouth. Drummer and audio mastermind Jared Sosa is from Norfolk. The musicians all crossed paths in art school at VCU.
Norfolk's own Little Trooper provided the finale to Friday night's shindig and I can see how the band's live show is getting more cohesive and forceful. My guess is that touring -- including a recent short run with Mas Y Mas -- has helped the group focus its live attack.
I left The Boot a happy man, clutching a Little Trooper button and a disc of two new songs: "Faster Louder" and "Dinner Time."