Lesands Bring Big '80s Chill to CMJ

Lesands claim to be from San Diego, but anyone that saw the band perform Wednesday night at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., knows the truth. The quartet actually arrives at this year's CMJ Music Marathon via 1986, a place every bit as warm and happy in the minds of many of this year's most buzzed-about artists.

Unlike, say, Brooklyn's Small Black, though, which does its dreamy '80s nostalgia with a harder, more hip-hop-oriented East Coast sensibility, Lesands aims for and achieves maximum California chillness. Singer Austin Taylor Tirado sings with an almost comic level of reverb on his vocals, and when he's not turning knobs on the sampler that blasts the synth lines and drum loops his bandmates play over, he's dancing like a starchier version of David Byrne in the 'Once in a Lifetime' video.

The group has only been together a short time, and this week's CMJ shows are part of its inaugural New York City trip. So far, Tirado is pleased with the response.

"We love playing for people in the East," he said late in the evening, just before pressing whichever button initiated the throbbing synth-reggae chords of 'Glowing,' one of the band's best blissed-out bangers.

Not all of Lesands' material is as fully realized, and at times in Wednesday's show, the musicians focused more on indie-rock textures du jour -- those halcyon synth sounds that transport 20- and 30-somethings to alternate-universe versions of their MTV childhoods -- than actual songs.

When the band hits on a chorus like the one in 'Pretenders,' though, it's as if chillwave has found its Erasure.