Suckers – Music Hall Of Williamsburg, New York 18/06/10

After weeks and weeks on the road with Local Natives, Brooklyn’s psychedelic-folk quartet Suckers finally came home. They played for a rabid audience of longtime fans, new listeners, friends and family, showing not even an ounce of exhaustion throughout their 60+ minute set. The band rattled off track after track from their excellent debut full-length album Wild Smile (out on Frenchkiss Records), such as the catchy, yelp-filled ‘Black Sheep’, the sing-a-longs ‘Martha’ and ‘Roman Candles’, and the explosive ballad ‘Save Your Love For Me’.

Just as their record’s title suggests, they’re anything but stoic on stage — Suckers are animated, wacky and playful, making for a performance that’s rife with free-spirited personalities and damn good tunes. Frontman Quinn Walker, the most engaging of the group, wore a graffiti-ed shirt, gold spandex leggings and purple high-top converse sneakers, while his face looked like a canvas for first-time face-painters.

When he wasn’t playing the guitar or banging a random maraca on the drums, he was singing and flailing his arms happily about like a man possessed by a friendly ghost. In between many of the songs, Walker often pointed to the balcony level to give gracious shout-outs to his family members, emphasizing how special the hometown show (which also doubled as their CD release show) was to the band. They reappeared to play ‘Loose Change’ for a rousing encore, inviting a whole gaggle of random girls, friends, and a who’s who of Brooklyn band-friends (members of Yeasayer, as well as singer-songwriter Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson) onto the stage. With so much love and good music in the room, it’d probably be enough to make you go a little crazy, too.