Review | An Adventurous Jungle Ride at the Santa Barbara Bowl

Every concert has its own unique rhythm, and after experiencing what my husband affectionately dubbed “the gray hot summer” of concerts with James Taylor, Neil Young, Peter Frampton, Graham Nash, and the like, the fall’s first show at the Santa Barbara Bowl had a decidedly different vibe.

Jungle — the British duo of Tom McFarland (see my interview here) and Joshua Lloyd-Watson and their merry tribe of revolving guest musicians — came out to the Bowl on September 6 with a joyfully youthful mission: to play and have fun. 

The happily fluid, musical-chair-hopping crowd (I’ve never seen so much movement between seats before) was there to bop their heads and wave their arms and simply let the music envelop them, festival style. The mass of swirling bodies and clouds of pot smoke took me back to another era — the music, however, was decidedly modern. 

For concertgoers who are cynical about the viability and vitality of seeing electronic dance music performed live, I can verify that in the case of Jungle, it definitely works. 

The grooves began with a rousing “Us Against the World,” and kept up the super high energy as they flowed into “Candle Flame,” featuring Erick The Architect in a background screen projection that was surprisingly effective. The video for that song has such great choreography by Shay Latukolan that I wasn’t sure how it would come off live, but it was still a crowd pleaser, despite the missing dancers. (Check out the moves on “Back on 74” for even more dance party marvelousness.) In addition to the video vocals, there were six musicians live on stage, with drums, samplers, synthesizers, keyboards, guitars, and percussion instruments all used extensively. 

The whole show was really its own kind of nu-disco electronic funk dance party, with the band’s silhouettes swaying against a mix of smoky haze and a dynamic light show of mostly red and orange tones, with an occasional disco ball thrown in for good measure.  

On keyboards and vocals (along with McFarland and Lloyd-Watson), Lydia Kitto jumped in with an infectious enthusiasm on an assortment of songs both new and old, including “The Heat,” “Heavy, California,” and “Back on 74,” with another rapper, Bas, featured via background screen video on “Romeo.” From the 2018 song “Happy Man” to “Holding On” and “You Ain’t No Celebrity” from their August 2023 album Volcano, the crowd never stopped moving and swaying with the wave of sound, getting lost in the power of the music. 

When during the encore, McFarland told the crowd, “I need you to go fucking bonkers with us on this next song,” as an intro to the 2021 release “What D’You Know About Me,” he hardly needed to to urge them on. This Jungle was already a big undulating mass of fun, and I was happy to be along for the ride.