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Barbarasteele |
| Soul, Set, A Blaze |
| Self Released | 2006 | Album |
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Long engaged in a feverish blitz of San Francisco venues--infecting even the most resilient of dance floors with their sublime brand of excess--barbarasteele finally landed in the gilded parlor of Café du Nord last Sunday for their much-anticipated record-release. The place was dripping with the beautiful and the damned--all dressed to the nines with fistfuls of wine. Simply put, a barbarasteele show is Gatsby’s posthumous wet dream--as sophisticated as it is lewd.
Counted among their fans is namesake and cult siren, Barbara Steele. Though the high-priestess of horror may be through with crawling out of coffins, her trademark lives on with barbarasteele. Best known for her supporting role in the Fellini classic, 8 ½ --Steele had a penchant for playing psychologically ambiguous characters. Conjuring violence and lust in each piercing stare--her audience was never quite sure whether they should be terrified or turned on. This disturbing dichotomy is ever-present in each track of Soul, Set, A Blaze. barbarasteele manages to deliver smut-soaked soul music with their pinkie fingers sticking out.
The breathy fibers of barbarasteele’s newest album evoke the heroin-soft tannins of Spiritualized and the Velvet Underground with an approach that might be considered deeply cerebral if not for the omnipresent and invasive funk. Despite loftier influences, several tracks have the same kind of dance floor magnetism as Prince or Delta 5.
Duende + the Some Now promises to be the key track on this album, but the crowd-rousing sleeper hit is most certainly Blaze Boys. Finely crafted before being dragged lightly through the ghetto, its drumming demonstrates restraint so tailored it borders on a Uri Gellar mind trick. Make no mistake--this is not hesitance or weakness on the part of Justin Vial but enough subtle precision to prove that less is truly more. In this case, less just happens to be enough 'more' to fuel a dancing frenzy.
Both tracks are sprinkled with handclaps so well placed they almost make up for the scores of indie bands that have abused the privilege of organic percussion. Enter resident ingénue, Dana Suchow. Firing MIDI-rapid handclaps, sweeping back-up vocals and miscellaneous percussion while propelling each song on keys, Suchow is a multi-tasker in a pencil skirt.
In an age when most disco hits serve to instruct ( as in 'shake that ass', 'back that thang up' and the ever popular, 'take me out') the heady concepts of hit track 'Duende + the Some Now' seem ripe for failure. Garcia Lorca and Nietzsche have both attempted to wrap words around the Spanish force of 'duende' with much posturing but little success. It doesn.t bode well for an artrock band to presume to explain the unexplainable. After all--what has Lorca got to do with 'backin' that thang up?' Everything. The duende is a scorching energy that surges through your veins. Racing from the soles of the feet, it is eager to break through hot flesh and make you move. A struggle to control or understand it would be in vain--this is the force that makes you dance. Makes you feel. Makes you fuck. With 'Duende + the Some Now', barbarasteele have nailed the quintessence of shaking your ass.
Anchoring each track are the strong-hold basslines of Mike Jalali. No doubt responsible for the hip-hop influence on 'Blaze Boys'--Jalali is not only stroking our collective duende but he’s keeping us real while he’s at it.
The near-pristine production quality of Soul, Set, A Blaze leaves one wondering how an unsigned band pulled off such a technically solid album. As a former underground hip-hop producer, bassist Jalali recorded the band himself before employing one of San Francisco.s finest--Kurt Schlegel-- to mix the material. Slick even down to the packaging--the album art has a filigree-ornate Beardsley quality that beautifully compliments the band’s live aesthetic.
Nero Nava forges the most subversive of stimuli into an exhibit in the three-ring circus that is his mind. Born of the cavernous pits of Italian horror flicks, the extravagant layers of Sacher- Masoch.s undergarments and the sordid, sullied stuff your mother was too timid to warn you about--this might be the scariest show on earth if his delivery weren’t so damned perfect.
Live shows see him as the ringleader of a makeshift Grand Guignol--gently stirring up the band and toying with the audience. Dismissively feeding us only a little at a time with the sadistic coolness of a drug dealer--yes, he’s got what you want but you are going to have to wait for it. Hell, he’ll make you clap for it.
Though his waxen stage persona might suggest he’s bored to death, one can catch the slightest sharpness of smirk every now and again--Nava is having fun.
Live, barbarasteele possess all the gracefulness of sex and dying in high society. Their syrupy decadence releases a gelatinous, demonic id onto the dance floor. It oozes up to perch on your unsuspecting shoulder and naughtily whispers 'Go. Go.' into your ear.
Still, there is something about them that is just a little too slick, a little too perfect. They are cocky, impeccably-dressed and seem to have more control over your body than you do. So you sit there waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It won’t.
barbarasteele is the gentleman caller that you instantly know is getting into your pants at the end of the night. Proving beyond a doubt that the underbelly and high brow aren’t the only parts of your body they are interested in. |
| K. Tighe - San Francisco |
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