G-Side
Beauty Bar, Thursday, March 17No amount of hustle or flow could have saved this Alabama duo from a malfunctioning microphone that turned every spat bar of country-fried soul into a nasally flatline doing nothing to help bottoms drop. Not that Yung Clova and ST 2 Lettaz lacked for effort. They were just the ill-fated benefactors of the showcase’s head honcho Franki Chan going 10 minutes into their set spinning Ramones remixes. Backed by two singers with another duo working the boards, the two spliced cuts from January’s The One … Cohesive, hitting a high note with the eerie violin pulls of “Came Up.” But G-Side never found the split between their Southern ghetto gospel and the all-out mayhem that Chan and the group’s follow-up, Big Freedia, evoked. Instead, everything grooved with no direction, and the lengthy breaks between cuts added up. With the exception of ST’s amusing declaration of his love for Beach House (“You might not think I fuck with those dudes, but I definitely do fuck with those dudes”) before their run through “10 Mile Stereo” knockoff “How Far,” there wasn’t much worth popping your head up for. Consider it bum luck and another chip to stack on G-Side’s ever-burdened shoulders.
This article appears in March 18 • 2011.