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Bikini Drone squeezed the last drops out of summer on Friday, Aug. 29, at Leisure Public House. The band’s bimonthly shows on the St. Johns bar’s back patio don’t leave a lot of room for direct audience participation, but the group—comprising Sloan Martin (vocals, keyboard, supporting guitar), Briggs Yahn (harmony vocals, lead guitar), Renato De Luca (bass) and Conrad Garrison (drums)—was far more adept at reading the room than most casual beach-style house bands. Bikini Drone turned a casual neighborhood hang into a full-on staycation.
The name Bikini Drone evokes two recent interests: music that only makes sense in tropical climates, and music that sounds like washing machines wrote it. In the context of a patio with loud overlapping conversations, Martin and Yahn’s vocals sounded like more instruments in the ensemble, which included a saxophone player. The timbre of their voices conveyed less lyrical stories and more added a tenor section that helped punctuate their bandmates’ funk-disco jams. The band’s tempo and energy waxed and waned with the audience, with the same symbiotic exchange DJs process on a dance floor in real time. People got up to dance at the two-hour set’s height, but six to eight of the two dozen patio guests stood rotating watch, swaying or at least nodding to the beat.
The sun noticeably sets earlier than a month ago. It was nice not only to watch it go down in balmy shade with a refreshing drink, but feel the evening enhanced by Bikini Drone’s live score. For what could easily have been a C-grade cover band was instead an artistically elevated experience. The free concert was a treat on all counts, a prize bargain for bargain hunters. If the night was a movie, Bikini Drone wrote it a fitting and memorable soundtrack.
