Although it was a damp, miserable Monday night – the sort of night where you’d probably want to crawl back into bed –David Nagler and Thom Soriano, the duo behind Nova Social, played a set at Cake Shop opening for Bright Light Blight Light. Perhaps more known nationally for their theme song for Cartoon Network’s Calling Cat-22 and their individual work collaborating and/or remixing the work of artists such as Chris Mills, the Mekons’ Jon Langford, the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus, John Wesley Harding, the English UK, They Might be Giants and Dan Bryk, they are underground dance pop scene legends here in New York. With a couple of full length albums and two EPs released over the past decade, they brought out a group of dedicated fans and dance music enthusiasts to see Nova Social and Bright Light Bright Light. Plus, Nova Social is playing dates to support their third and forthcoming release, For Any Inconvenience.
For this set, the duo of Soriano and Nagler employed the use of two violinists, a cellist, a guitarist, and backup singer Xavier to flesh out their sound or to make it easier for the duo to handle just one particular duty instead of several simultaneous ones. Certainly, the addition of strings added a regal quality to the proceedings and in some way brought their sound a little bit in line with the retro disco sonics of other local acts such as Escort and Avan Lava. But for the most part, sonically the band’s material will draw much closer comparison to early to mid 80s Depeche Mode, Power, Corruption and Lies or Substance 1980-1987-era New Order, Dead or Alive and several other 80s dance pop acts, complete with big explosive drumbeats and slick but always kind of cheesy snyth lines. Lyrically, much of the material has the dry humor and irony of the Pet Shop Boys, especially “Drunk at the Prom,” one of the standout tracks from the new album. As catchy and hooky as the material actually is, it hews very closely to its influences – to the point that it will strike the listener as riding the ol’ nostalgia train.
And yet, despite that major fault, they band delivered the material with an amiably, goofy charm that makes it difficult to not like them – or to not smile as they entertained the crowd. Would it have won over new fans? I’m not sure. There was a sense of the band preaching to the already converted but still I admired the fact that they performed with aplomb and a generous sense of humor about themselves.
