San Diego pioneers WITT and Snuffaluffagus are off on a West Coast tour to Canada. The send-off show at UCSD's Ché Café sees an all-ages (read: teenages) crowd hopping around to upbeat indie Bossa Nova folk-fusion jams from Snuffy's new album Brazil Wood Poetry. Slender frontman Chris Braciszewski looks like the guru from a benevolent sound cult (see MySpace) with falsetto vocals over hollow-body licks and busy fretless five-string bass. Guitarist Jesse Kranzler broadcasts sonic élan via erratic Tourette chicken jolts.
Between sets, kids (really, kids) talk cross-legged on the dance floor and kick Hacky Sacks on the porch.
Silver balloons reading W-I-T-T lurk on stage as Snuffy strips down to Kranzler, drummer Evan Backer, and bassman Henry Wessman, triangulating among the audience to facilitate eye contact. The trio jerks into nonlinear free-jazz math rock (except, what's math when you're using make believe symbols?), strobes through hermetic time signatures, exchanges glances that say "go, now, change!" between impossible deconstructed polyrhythms, every foot tapping to a different beat. Attention-deficit rock, academic dissonance, an extended digression without resolve.
"Does anyone need earplugs?" Kranzler asks before the last song. "I have one pair."
San Diego pioneers WITT and Snuffaluffagus are off on a West Coast tour to Canada. The send-off show at UCSD's Ché Café sees an all-ages (read: teenages) crowd hopping around to upbeat indie Bossa Nova folk-fusion jams from Snuffy's new album Brazil Wood Poetry. Slender frontman Chris Braciszewski looks like the guru from a benevolent sound cult (see MySpace) with falsetto vocals over hollow-body licks and busy fretless five-string bass. Guitarist Jesse Kranzler broadcasts sonic élan via erratic Tourette chicken jolts.
Between sets, kids (really, kids) talk cross-legged on the dance floor and kick Hacky Sacks on the porch.
Silver balloons reading W-I-T-T lurk on stage as Snuffy strips down to Kranzler, drummer Evan Backer, and bassman Henry Wessman, triangulating among the audience to facilitate eye contact. The trio jerks into nonlinear free-jazz math rock (except, what's math when you're using make believe symbols?), strobes through hermetic time signatures, exchanges glances that say "go, now, change!" between impossible deconstructed polyrhythms, every foot tapping to a different beat. Attention-deficit rock, academic dissonance, an extended digression without resolve.
"Does anyone need earplugs?" Kranzler asks before the last song. "I have one pair."