Recap Gayngs at Turner Hall

The indie-rock supergroup Gayngs looks and feels like a lark that was hatched by an extended network of musicians that have spent too much time rolling joints on top of Pablo Cruise records. But during only its third show ever Wednesday at Turner Hall, the abundant and mostly white-clad outfit sounded slinky, fluid, and surprisingly well rehearsed. This might end up being the only time Gayngs takes its 2010 debut Relayted out on the road, but the touring members—which include 10 out of the original 24 or so contributors to the album—don’t appear to be treating this as a passing fancy.

Which is not to say that there wasn’t a fair amount of fucking around on stage. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Gayngs’ biggest star and its nimble, perpetually grinning lead guitarist, appeared to be having the most fun. (Coming in a close second was Ryan Olson, Gayngs’ mastermind and shadowy guru, who claimed the back corner of the stage and spent the night dancing with himself in a cloud of cigarette smoke.) Donning a white shirt, white pants, a black bowtie, and pink sunglasses, Vernon looked like a psych-ward orderly on vacation, and he seemed thoroughly tickled to just be a part of the band and playing music far removed from the frigid folk of Bon Iver.

Teasing his vocals with heaping helpings of Auto-Tune, Vernon unveiled his distinctive falsetto on a heartfelt version of Sade’s “By Your Side,” one of two covers that buffeted the songs from Relayted, which were otherwise performed in order. “It’s a different kind of hump day on this Wednesday, isn’t it?” Vernon crowed at one point, but Relayted isn’t nearly as sexy as the creators like to claim that it is. The songs might sound like sheets blowing in the breeze on a hot summer night, but they’re more about yearning for action than actually getting it. Relayted is like that girl that comes on strong in public, but once you get her alone, she just wants to talk about her shitty ex-boyfriends all night.

Drawing on the coke-and-caviar new-romanticism of Roxy Music’s Avalon, the drugged-out bad vibes of Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear, and—more so live than on record—the glacial, bottom-heavy sensuality of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, Gayngs makes music that makes your head bob rather than your hips thrust. Early songs like “The Gaudy Side Of Town” and “No Sweat” were all draggy beats (supplied by excellent drummer Joe Westerlund, moonlighting with his fellow bandmates from North Carolina trio Megafaun) and pained vocals that overlapped from all points on the stage.

Olson intentionally structured Relayted to be a sleek and smooth smudge; it’s never quite clear who’s doing what or to whom. This plays to the record’s advantage, making Gayngs sound like an appropriately amorphous and faceless unit. But on stage, the lack of focus on any single member dampened the band’s stage presence. It was a fitting tribute to the studio-based ’80s soft-rockers that inspired this project, but it made waiting for poppier songs like “Crystal Rope” and the dynamic “Faded High” occasionally tiresome amid all the downbeat vamping. But there was no denying Gayngs’ frequently tremendous musicianship—even the smirky, set-closing cover of Alan Parsons’ “Eye In The Sky” sounded fabulous. All that was missing was a fireplace and a bearskin rug.