New Jersey’s Real Estate and Brooklyn’s the Babies played a sold-out show last Wednesday at La Sala Rossa.

Local trio Reversing Falls opened with their tuneful and distorted pop punk, using a  drum machine so good that it took this reviewer about 30 seconds to realize there wasn’t a live drummer on stage.

The new project of members of Vivian Girls and Woods, the Babies easily won over the audience with a set of solid garage rock. The vocal interplay and boy-girl harmonies between Cassie Ramone and Kevin Morby were particularly impressive.

Real Estate sounded great—their guitars were as warm and sunny as on record—but they didn’t turn in a very compelling live performance.  There was little movement on stage, minimal banter, and requesting technical adjustments between most songs killed the flow of the set. The laid back, hazy nature of their music doesn’t exactly lend itself to urgent playing, but it would’ve been nice to see a bit more life.