Skyfallout

There’s a fresh approach to Christian Motos’s music that jumped out the first time I heard him at a University Heights open mic in ’07. Since then, the San Diego native’s realized his dreams of forming a band, solidifying his “Flowerthief” persona, and mastering the art of being as enthused about stomping his pointy-toed boots on the stages of near-empty bars as he is in houses jammed with supporters.

Following in the boot prints of his hero, Paul McCartney, the ambitious CSU San Marcos alum composed a song for the new James Bond film Skyfall. (The song wasn’t used in the film, but it closes Flowerthief’s new self-released album, Natural Selection.)

Flowerthief’s CD-release party, which was last Friday (January 18) at Soda Bar, saw the buoyant songwriter presenting a set of occasionally chamber-leaning pop-rock that expands on Motos’s Rubber Soul–era Beatles and McCartney and Dylan influences to revel in its own warm, melodic voice. And that voice can take surprising directions. About his attempted Skyfall soundtrack contribution, Motos commented, “It harks back to the ’60s Bond, where John Barry and Monty Norman meet Ennio Morricone.”