all photos: Dakota Fine

This was a great night.
Somewhere, somehow stars aligned in that very special “a show that was meant to be” way and brought Sao Paolo’s Garotas Suecas and Neil into the same room on the corner of Nebraska and Connecticut with all of us, and for that we should all be grateful.
It was a Thursday, it was FREEZING outside, no matter how you put it, Comet is not really metro accessible (and walking up Connecticut Ave when it is FREEZING outside is not fun), Dakota was really worried I would ditch him and stay in (because it was FREEZING outside and not because I hate him-ed), and I am glad I didn’t.

This is why….

Neil (who is back to his usual St. EX Brazilian night ways this Thursday) warmed up the crowd to a nice and moderately toasty level and as everyone was starting to shimmy and shake their pizza calories off and double up on after dinner drinks Garotas bounded on the stage.
I say “stage”, but I really mean “the far end corner of the room where you can normally play ping pong after dinner” (the ping pong tables propped to the walls, so be careful how you lean).
Which is rad.
So many bands these days (I am looking at you F*ck Yeah tour, in your entirety) try to do the whole “eschew the stage for audience contact” action in venues where this is not supposed to happen, that it is awesome to be somewhere where all that can happen naturally.
Now, Garotas Suecas look 18 to me (at most, though NPR informs me that they are 19 to 24) and I love them all the more for that.

They are from Brazil and have dark, curly hair, and play their drums and guitars really fast and drink whiskey out of flasks and have a little blonde girl keyboard player in a “Blondes for Obama” t-shirt, who spent most of the preshow making out with someone on a corner couch only managing to wrangle herself out of it all to rock out.

They have a van and they are in the US and they are trying to get to West Virginia, I think.
Which they will if you come to their shows and buy their $5 CDs (which are, frankly, worth much more)
They also love Rolling Stones and The Sly and The Family Stone and Aretha Franklin in ways only 18 year old kids who did not grow up in English speaking countries can (I know, I was one of them) and it shows unabashedly.
All of which are great things.

They’re living a dream. A percussion heavy-guitars and balls to the walls – skinny tie on a t-shirt wearing- dance your pantalones off – shake what your mama-and-papa gave you kind of dream. You know, the kind of dream you probably had when you were 18 before you got sent off to college to study something responsible and tangible and all your dreams of touring foreign countries with your (maybe imaginary?) band in a magical van were crushed.

The fun dream.
Anyway, the crowd was great and danced and there were people young and old, and Brazilian and non-Brazilian there and by the 5th song I was really both in love with them and in love with my gin and tonic (not necessarily in that order) and I became one of those people who shake their head so much that you cannot see their face from their hair, grabbing Kalani and screaming over the guitar riffs “Where in God’s place did you find them???!!!!!!! I LOVE THEM!!!!!!” (apparently, a friend of his books them or something? literally, it was meant to be-ed) and then kind of not wanting it to be over even though it is midnight and I have a blog to work on and work to go to in the morning and a home to get to before any of that and a 5 am wake up call.
A wake up call from my Garotas Suecas dream.
Dammit.

Don’t miss them next time.

WANT MORE:
Socialize with them here
and download the whole Dinosaurs EP for nothing (but love) here
…
and get the full Garotas BYT set by Dakota here