Recap Extra Golden and This Bright Apocalypse at The Annex

If the atmosphere of Tuesday night's Extra Golden show at The Annex seemed a tad low-key, it wasn't for lack of festive, witty musical interplay. Sure, the band plays a hybrid of rock and Kenyan benga music that can benefit greatly from a strong audience vibe—but that wasn’t the case. Despite plenty of polite requests by lead singer Onyango Jagwasi, only a handful of people were up front dancing. After the band opened with the fuzz-guitar leads and chugging rhythms of "Ilando Gima Onge" (the opening track from the band's 2006 debut, Ok-Oyot System), the soft-spoken Jagwasi asked the audience if they'd like to "come visit me in my office." ("It's funny because he's onstage," yelled some smart-ass.) Later, explaining how "ok-oyot" translates roughly into "it's not easy," he sheepishly added, "I know dancing is not easy." Well, you could fill a whole book with fun bands being mildly put off by Madison's often-reserved concert crowds.

Jagwasi may have seemed a bit shy and ineffectual when speaking to the crowd, but his vocals lead the bright melodies and pulsating rhythms of songs like "Ukimwi" as much as the smartly paired guitars of Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff. Still, the vocals on the whole were at their best when drummer Onynago Wuod Omari harmonized with Jagwasi, sounding especially rich on "Ok-Oyot System."

Even amid the more sedentary part of the crowd (most of it), Extra Golden still proved a fun band to watch, because the set hit an elusive sweet spot between strong pop hooks and groovy guitar jams. On "Gimakiny Akia" (from the recent Thank You Very Quickly), Minoff and Eagleson jump back and forth behind Jagwasi's verses, trading loose variations on a catchy guitar figure. Omari's drumming hit plenty of playful fills, but he also gradually changed up his patterns to suit the shifting moods of tunes like "Jakolando" and "Fantasies Of The Orient," and Noel Kupersmith's melodic bass lines proved equally dynamic. Really, when a band's this good at crafting tunes that feel both well-constructed and craftily improvised, doesn't it deserve a flock of dancers? During "Jakolondo," the second-to-last song, Jagwasi made good on his threat to "come down there" to stir up some dancing, but there were still only a few mellow-boogiein' couples to join him.

Madison trio This Bright Apocalypse opened the night with its own version of indie-rock-meets-Africa, fusing earnest post-punk moodiness with West African sounds inspired by bassist-singer Luke Bassuener's travels to Ghana as a volunteer. For "Guilt By Location," he sampled some instrumental parts he recorded with musicians in that region. Decider sometimes finds itself wanting this band to play a little more aggressively. But This Bright Apocalpyse is more about blending its inner Jawbox into generally subtle songs like "Able" and "Slogans For A Savannah," on which guitarist Johnny Maloney got to have a math-rock outburst or two in between palm-muted melody lines. Bassuener introduced the set closer, "Sankara," as "about everybody's favorite former president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara." Even though the group's vocals can be a little uneven at times, "Sankara" finished with some surprisingly rich three-part harmonies. Of course, only a few folks had shown up by this point, and surely This Bright Apocalypse would also be better off with more of a crowd to urge it on. And, not unlike Extra Golden, the band writes compelling songs that warrant more of a response than it got Tuesday night.