Wizards of Hyperpop
IN 2019, Dylan Brady and Laura Les got on club stages with plastic trees and Hobbit- style wizard hats and sent kids wild with their gleefully chaotic, genre-exploding hyperpop anthems. Two years later, even with a whole damn pandemic in between, their band, 100 Gecs, have seen their legion of fans grow big enough that they sold out two nights at New York’s Terminal 5. (They’ve seriously upped their wizard-robe game, too.) 100 Gecs are still putting the finishing touches on 10000 Gecs, their second album, which emerged after a first attempt was scrapped. Brady admits it was occasionally hard to be creative during the pandemic, but the process brought clarity: “I learned how I want to continue living my life,” he says.
“Just trying to zoom out more.” At Terminal 5, even the unreleased 10000 Gecs tracks started a frenzy, especially “Hollywood Baby.” The guitars have a new hard-rock crunch, and Les, sans Auto-Tune, lets her vocals rattle ragged and wild. “We’re in a different place,” she says. “It would have been a mistake to do the same stuff.”