Delta Spirit gives new meaning to Indie rock

Delta Spirit shrieked their passionate lyrics, riffed their guitars and experimented with percussion to a sold-out mob at The Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa Saturday night. The soulful rock-band played with hopeful desperation that set them above the average indie band.

Delta Spirit combines elements of The Beatles’ modernism, The Strokes’ fervor and Bob Dylan’s folk soul to create poetic ballads on top of violent percussion and metal strings.

Jon Jameson, Sean Walker and Brandon Young rallied vocalist Matthew Vasquez and multi-instrumentalist Kelly Winrich into the San Diego based band in 2005. The five men played their beats on the Detroit stage as a soulful symphony, extracting wild intensity from each note.

Delta Spirit has a unique philosophy about musicology made clear by the band’s front man Matthew Vasquez. The Daily Forty-Niner stole some time after the show with the vocalist to absorb his methods, advice and subtle humility.

“I think sincerity beats sarcasm. There is already too many cool people out there,” Vasquez said. “Maybe it’ll be good maybe or maybe they will tell us to fuck off but at least we’re good. Good in the sense that we cared and we were straight with you with what we thought and how we played.”

Delta Spirit opened with “Strange Vine” from their self-released, self-produced album “Ode to Sunshine” in front of a backdrop of a mossy wooded forest. Delta Spirit maintained a sense of chaos and spontaneity within each carefully crafted melody.

Vasquez wailed into his microphone, like a man on a desperate edge. The veins in his neck protruded as he fiercely cried, “You make your own stand, you take your own stand,” in the song “Children.”

While sitting with Vasquez in a dimly-lit booth, he shifted to a subtler version of himself with messy hair and tired eyes. He began to quote Mark Twain but paused, chuckled a bit and said, “It would be vain for me to give you the impression that I’m smarter than I really am.”

Winrich seemed to be able to play any instrument on stage as he beat the piano, wailed on the guitar and hammered a trashcan lid during the song “Trashcan.” Vasquez and Winrich share the lyrical writing of most of the songs.

“We kind of go at it like an AA program, like one day at a time,” Vasquez admitted. “It’s all grown through, lived through, experienced through. Pay for your successes through your defeats.”

Delta Spirit sang through darkness in a few songs, as they lowered the lights to increase intensity. “Crippler King” and “Streetwalker” had an angry blues edge with deepened bass and rapid, electric strumming.

The culmination of the show came when members from the opening bands Dawes and We Are Barbarians joined Delta Spirit on stage. Eleven musicians packed the platform picking up tambourines, bells, drumsticks and microphones as they roared the song “People, Turn Around.”

“Learn how to play with people, don’t just sit in your garage,” Vasquez advised. “Anybody you play with has something to offer you. Whether it’s a good guitar lick, melody idea or singing technique or a drum beat.”

In a world of Hannah Montanas and The Jonas Brothers it’s refreshing to see a band with such careful dedication to their musical craft.

Downplaying Delta Spirit’s successes Vasquez said, “It is what it is. You do the best you can to explain how you feel and you hope that people identify with it, and if they do it’s awesome.”