By Vincent Valentino

It’s 7 degrees out and there’s enough snow in the air and on the ground to make footing hard to find and questionable when found. In the midst of this white winter scene, I made my way to Spacebar to “find a little love” with Nick D’ & the Believers. Fortunately for me, they brought along The Receiver and Kid Runner for their EP release show, creating a bill diverse in style but overflowing with lush melodies and atmospheric textures.

The Receiver started the evening off with eery synth loops and a minimal drum beat, building slowly until a quick coalescence between Casey Cooper’s baroque-prog bass lines and Jesse Cooper’s always-in-the-pocket beats, pulling your mind and body deeper into a trance equal parts ethereal and rhythmically bombastic. It’s as if nobody told the Cooper brothers that you can play outside the rhythmic pocket, Jesse in particular best described as a machine: every fill,  roll, and ghost note perfectly in time with Casey and their pre-arranged synth loops. Also there’s nobody who rides a ride cymbal like that – seamlessly transitioning from crashing to caressing the metal instantly. This deep-pocket prog rhythm is accented by Casey’s bass lines, simultaneously familiar and foreign. The band has a knack for letting the rhythm section take center stage, whilst easily dropping into the background, allowing lush synth loops and Casey Cooper’s ghostly crooning to drift through your consciousness before the next bass-drums bombardment hits.

After being treated to one of the most familiar Receiver tunes, “Visitor”, the band tore down and Nick D’ & the Believers tore it up, golden blazers and Nick D’Andrea’s signature golden synth gleaming in the pre-show fog, spewed out moments before the band began.

If there’s anything that needs to be understood about Nick D’ & the Believers, it’s that they radiate positivity – I don’t think there was a single time Nick, Kerry and Joe weren’t cracking grins between every howl. And that’s where the band’s name really makes sense: Nick D’ and company are here to make believers out of us all, and it’s hard not to buy in and lose yourself in the gold-trimmed soul they pump out, song after song, hook after hook. Similarly to The Receiver, nobody told these boys you could write music without hooks – there isn’t a section of any of their songs (particularly off their new EP “Wanted”) that you won’t be humming well after the lights have come back on and you have to pay your tab. And the soul isn’t Nick D’s alone – guitarist Kerry Henderson gets down just as low, with a guitar tone straight out of 50’s pop radio, and harmonies that easily trace the contours of Nick D’s perfectly, whilst drummer Joseph Barker grooves tight and in the pocket, pulling your body into the band’s self-styled realm of pop – he’ll have you bobbing your head long before you realize it yourself. All of this accented by Nick D’s playful synthesizer tones, equal parts youthful and psychedelic – creating a deep, lush sound that demand you take a second listen. Nick D’ & the Believers have found themselves stylistically between a modern day Beach Boys and early career MGMT – there’s as much playfulness and positivity in their songs as there are harmonies and groovy, extremely danceable beats. This is the kind of music you listen to in the middle of the night at a campfire on a nameless beach in California with your closest friends with a bottle of whiskey and a dime bag, and they brought it to the middle of a frigid night in Columbus, OH, melting the ice off of everybody in the building, with more than half the crowd hugging, dancing, and drinking in a pit at the front of the stage as we all sang “Find a little, love before you go!”

Admittedly, I had to compose myself a little before I continued on with the night, grabbing myself a fresh gin and tonic before Kid Runner took the stage. I took this time to congratulate Nick and his Believers on a killer show and a gorgeous EP and comeback down to Earth a little bit. While I was decompressing, Kid Runner unpacked, the crowd primed, ready, beyond in the mood to get down, and the Kids delivered.

On the spectrum of experimentalism and and popism laid out by The Receiver and Nick D’ & the Believers, Kid Runner certainly sits closer to Nick D’, but that doesn’t mean they sit in their shadow – Kid Runner creates a kind of pop that meshes synth melodies with electronica tones and crisp vocals full of emotion – and they’re writing songs for stadiums, Spacebar barely able to contain their sound (somewhere between Old Hundred, Passion Pit, Fun.). One of the first things that’ll will grab your attention is synth player/singer Fran’s use of the vocoder, calling Daft Punk-esque tones to mind. The band has an excellent sense of songwriting, every member taking on at least two roles (usually all joining in for a chant or series of “woah-ohs” or lead singer Drew’s use of a floor tom to accent the rhythm). The songs themselves deftly culminate in an sensory overload while drummer Scott lays down beats equally bombastic and danceable. I was surprised by Kid Runner, having heard the name but not the sound. They’re doing synth-based pop right, and if they’re not playing to packed warehouses, they will be soon.

Easily one of the better shows I’ve seen in Columbus, the Nick D’ release show brought a little love and a lot of warmth to a dreary February Friday night, and was an excellent showcase for a new wave of musicians flooding the Columbus music scene – diversity, pop sensibilities, tasteful experimentalism, and acts overflowing with emotion everywhere from brooding to charismatic, we all should be keeping our ears to the ground for what these three bands do in the future.