Concert Preview: Lavender Diamond

Lavender Diamond sounds like the cast album to a plotless off-Broadway musical starring a fairy princess on rollerskates. In reality, they're a Californian indie quartet fronted by Becky Stark—sparkling chanteuse, wearer of candy-colored gowns and, occasionally, iridescent wings. Her musical influences are church singing and Fugazi, and she got a magic wand for Christmas:

it's pink and has a red heart that lights up and it plays a magic spell sound when you wave it. i know it was made in china by slave children and it is horrible to buy anything new, isn't it? [...] when we go on tour to europe this winter [with the Decemberists] i can wave it because i won't be able to talk so i'll just wave my wand.

Lavender Diamond's songs are buoyant and sincere to a fault. "You Broke My Heart" is a felix culpa of soaring vocals, stompy folk arrangements, hyperbolic lyrics, and charmingly aggressive earnestness. (Download the mp3. You'll see.) When Becky Stark rollerskates down the street holding eggs with faces on them, when she commands the suburbs to open their hearts and tear them apart, when she dances with a lady in a bumblebee dress, she means it. (See the "Open Your Heart" video to admire the oldschool rollerskates and the irony-shaped hole left in their wake.)

So while we're psyched for their Friday night show at the MFA, Bostonist's excitement is tempered by fear of being dusted with second-hand glitter and not getting it all out of our hair by Monday morning.

Lavender Diamond
Museum of Fine Arts, Remis Auditorium
Friday 6/1, 7:30 pm, $12-$20
Entrance, Dr. Doo, and Kites open.