Django Django animate and energize crowd in San Francisco

Django Django was nothing but electricity at the Regency Ballroom Friday night. On tour for their second album Born Under Saturn (2015), the performers came out in a cloud of smoke, greeted to enormous cheer. Beneath the rapidly-switching, muddily colored lights, the band walked out with raised arms, shouting “Let’s go!”

The band dove in and took every opportunity to get close to the audience, running, twirling, and jumping to and from the very edge of the stage. The evening was filled with their whoop’s and whoo’s, gentle coo’s, and echoing a-yo’s. Everything rumbled and it seemed like the ground moved. The smoke never went away, seeping into the space of general admission. When singer Vincent Neff announced “This is… Shake and Tremble!” and the song played, people went wild.

The energy level was, without a doubt, memorable. True performers, Django Django fist-pumped, head-bumped, and got more and more of the crowd dancing as concert-goers surrendered to the music. The band’s infectious clapping and stomping never slowed, even as Neff repeatedly paused to talk between songs, addressing us all as “People of San Francisco.” He did this while coming out from the smoke, as if Django Django were aliens sent to bring true synth to Earth.

Everything happening onstage was dynamic — drummer David Maclean, for instance, played from both behind and in front of the drum set. Neff at times had a drum at the front microphone. The guitarist and bassist thrust their instruments’ necks into the air, and band members exchanged a variety of differently-sized maracas and tambourines, hitting them together for a mix of sounds.

They commanded us to get higher and higher, and as the evening progressed, the screen behind the band changed from a steady pulsing to a scratching, broken screen. By the time they played “Default,” the combination of noise and lights was sense-suspending. The music throbbed, buzzed, and clicked, sending the bodies of the crowd dancing and flailing in an unbearable, sweaty bliss.

The band, prior to playing the last songs, required that everyone stop, drop, and slowly rise again with the music. It was a world in which Django Django ruled. And, in the end, it was a world none of us wanted to leave.