LA bands find breath of fresh air at desert fest

Last weekend, while many local music fans trekked to Eagle Rock for the free, all-ages music festival, a smaller amount of LA audiophiles made the drive out to Joshua Tree for an entirely different aural experience. Held at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace — a true saloon on the fringes of a fake “Western” town built by Hollywood directors and actors in the 1940s — the second annual Manimal Fest brought some of the city’s most unusual underground acts to a cell phone reception dead zone. The two-day, two-stage, 20-plus band lineup created a multifaceted desert playlist that sonically decries its collective urban beginnings.

By 4 p.m. Saturday, Pappy and Harriet’s was serving up booze-filled mason jars and homestyle BBQ grub while attendees poured into the unpaved backyard corral to hear the laptop-assisted Talking Heads harmonies of Pizza!, the delay-heavy post-apocalyptic Power Rangers safari that is WEAVE! and the psychedelic sounds of Rainbow Arabia’s unrestrained global fusion.

As the wind picked up and the sun dropped into a cloudless, bright orange dusk, Corridor’s multi-instrumentalist Michael Quinn sat center stage. Surrounded by boards stuffed with distortion, reverb and looping pedals, the one-man band masterfully crafted his haunting epics by adding textured layers of repeated live cello and guitar-playing over ethereal pre-stored beats, building momentum one riff at a time until the gusts of swirling sand around him made it hard to tell where the paranormal music ended and the enigma of the surrounding desert began.

Inside the main restaurant — a spacious, wooden honky tonk — the early evening was filled with the less-alienating side of Manimal Fest. While the women wearing ponchos over thrift store dresses and men dressed like extras from Almost Famous confused Pappy and Harriet’s Saturday evening regulars, the Misty Mountain Bluegrass Band and folk-based Amanda Jo Williams swept the locals through dinner hour.

After sunset, the temperature dropped. Although there were portable space heaters scattered around the outdoor area, the heavy afro-pop 12-piece ensemble Fool’s Gold became the crowd’s saving grace, forcing those watching to keep close and gyrate hard as the band’s three guitars, one saxophone and slew of tribal percussion came together as if Broken Social Scene and Tinariwen were simultaneously playing a show at a synogague on a Native American reservation. After Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes — another crowded stage effort featuring several members of Fool’s Gold — played upbeat cult jams through the 11 p.m. outdoor curfew, everyone moved inside for a fog-machine-filled Hecuba dance party and the final show of the night, an unintelligible half-hour of poppy-electronic weirdness from Laco$te.

While the music industry frets over radio airplay, national tours and iTunes sales, Manimal is busy bringing some of LA’s most eclectic bands to Pioneertown, a place that exists outside of strict venue security and overpriced bar specials. From one-man symphonies to a soccer team’s worth of drumbeats, the annual festival is a place where judgments rest on sound, not marketing, and the music is free to be as unpredictable as the desert itself.