LA LOM Enraptures Sold-Out Kessler Theater With Worldly Instrumentals

The bodies — all ages, shapes, sizes and nationalities — swayed seemingly in unison, enraptured by the rhythm emanating from the stage.

Wednesday night, three musicians from Los Angeles commanded a sold-out Kessler Theater with nothing more than drums, guitar and bass. Nary a word was sung, and for 90 minutes, the Los Angeles League of Musicians, or LA LOM, as they’re better known, delivered one of the most hypnotic performances seen this year in North Texas.

The trio — guitarist Zac Sokolow, bassist Jake Faulkner and drummer/percussionist Nicholas Baker — synthesizes a multitude of influences from across U.S., Mexican and South American musical diasporas, blending cumbia, salsa, Peruvian and Colombian folk music and sun-blasted Bakersfield twang into a wholly intoxicating concoction.

It's little wonder the band has caught fire as it has — LA LOM’s very roots lie in hospitality. The band originally formed in 2019, per its bio, as a nightly source of “background music for … patrons, tourists and passersby” at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.

Initially reflective of the melting pot that is Los Angeles and West Coast music, LA LOM eventually expanded its focus to incorporate Motown, bolero and rockabilly swagger. Much like contemporaries Khruangbin or Chicano Batman, mood is everything — and the musicians of LA LOM are supremely attentive to its ebbs and flows.

The capacity crowd roared the moment the three men stepped onto the stage promptly at 9 p.m., took their instruments in hand and launched into the evening’s opening number, “Café Tropical.” Scarcely three songs later, sweat already dappled the brows of Sokolow and Faulkner, both of whom danced and jumped and exhorted the attendees to give themselves over even more fully: “You guys know how to dance here in Dallas!” Sokolow crowed.

LA LOM was back in town just three months after it passed through as an opening act for Vampire Weekend’s June stop in Irving. There, amid the concrete-laden suburban sprawl, LA LOM still exerted its arresting hold on the audience — on the cusp of summer, such lilting, melodic instrumentals felt like bathing in the rays of the sun.

Taken inside, and concentrated in a room a fraction the size, the effect was even more intense. The temperature — indeed, the very humidity — seemed to rise over the course of the night, as the supple, vivid songs spilled and faded and bled into one another, trailing off only to roar back to life.

LA LOM was a fascinating study in near-constant motion: Sokolow’s guitar strap detached mid-song at one point, but he kept stutter-stepping, shaking the neck of the guitar and wringing gorgeous melodies from its body, as Faulkner’s fingers skipped along his strings (on both electric and stand-up bass), the lightness belying the weight of low end he was conjuring. Meanwhile, Baker’s hands, slapping cymbals and conga and shaking maracas, breezed between his drums as if caressing the rhythm.

The band’s self-titled debut studio album, barely a month old, got a proper airing — “Maravilla,” “Ghosts of Gardena,” “Angels Point” and “Rebecca” all made an appearance Wednesday — but LA LOM made plenty of space for other works from their catalog, including “Santee Alley,” “Moonlight Over Montebello” and “La Tijera.”

The band even trotted out freshly written material, although titles weren’t provided — the thick reverb on Sokolow’s microphone often made it tough, at times, to decipher what he was saying.

LA LOM also generously brought the evening’s engaging opener, Radio Malilla, back onto the stage for its encore, further reinforcing the trio’s dedication to fusing the sounds and styles of California, Mexico and Texas.

Frankly, sounds this irresistible don’t really need translation. Spanish flowed from the stage as much as English Wednesday, but regardless of your own personal fluency, the sentiment wasn’t difficult to understand. The true beauty of music, broadly, is how easily it slips across borders real or imaginary — floating through the air, requiring little more than willing ears and proficient purveyors.

Wednesday night, gazing around the ecstatic room bathing in the music of LA LOM — eyes closed, arms outstretched, blissful smiles abounding — was to be reminded of how very little separates us from one another, all of us open to the revivifying power of art and its ever-astonishing capacity to bind us together and lift us, rising ever higher, as one.