The Votes Are In!
2024 Readers' Choice is back, bigger and better than ever!
View Winners → Archive Jul 19, 2013
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Our first lesson of the day is – if you are having a bad day, just google “Baby Alpaca.” We dare you. Ahhh, there. See? Feel better already? Nothing makes you more warm and fuzzy inside than those alien-looking lambs, right?
Second lesson is that there is also a band named Baby Alpaca–and they are worth adding to your internal musical line-up and blasting while you are cruising in your old-school Lincoln, top-down, on PCH.
Baby Alpaca first entered our musical vocabulary at the launch party of Mack Sennett, a rad space in Los Feliz that used to be a silent movie studio but has been recently transformed into a state-of-the-art film and photo studio. In between dancing our pants off and watching Dita Von Teese dance her pants off, we heard some moody, ethereal jams that floated from the stage and stopped us in our tracks.
Lead singer, Chris Kittrell is iconically statuesque and boasts a light, operatic voice at once familiar and yet amorphous…(We heard whispers in the audience, “Shh…who does he sound like? A bit Morrissey?”) Team it with the delicate yet deliberate reverb of guitarist Zach McMillan and you’re reminded of a happier, poppier version of The XX. Add drummer Ben Lecourt and cellist Ethan Philbrick (yes, cellist) and you drift off into a modern lullaby. (Appropriately, they’ve got a single called “Sea of Dreams.”) We spent the day in Silverlake with the charmers, lying lazily by the pool and playing with our own shadows, as Chris answered some quick questions below:
LA CANVAS: What’s your spirit animal?
CK: A Tiger
LAC: your TOP, I-die-if-I-were-to-see-them-in-live-or-in-a-public-restroom music inspirations from the 70s, 80s and then 90s?
CK: 70s: The Doors; 80s: The Police; 90s: TLC
LAC: Favorite music video that is not your own?
CK: El Guincho – Bombay
El Guincho – Bombay from CANADA on Vimeo.
LAC: Where do you see Baby Alpaca in four years this same time in the summer?
CK: Playing concerts at the beach with a drive-in movie like stage setup. Towels instead of cars.
LAC: When you think of LA, you think of…
CK: Riding in the hills on a Harley swaying like palm trees
Baby Alpaca live:
Wed 7/24: Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theatre (info HERE)
Sat 7/27: Palm Springs, CA @ ACE Hotel “Summerschool”
Wed 7/31: Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios (info HERE)
{ Photo + Text: Faith-Ann Young }
