Les Savy Fav
9 out of 10 - Simply Amazing. Can't wait to see 'em again.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Live at Warsaw – Brooklyn (Greenpoint), NY
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“Are you alive beneath your makeup?
Or just an un-dead ghoul?”
--from ‘Hold On To Your Genre’
“Les Savy Fav / That’s our name”
--from ‘Rodeo’
It would be one thing to review Les Savy Fav by simply rattling off the predictable list of influences, inspirations, and muses here. Reputable sources have tepidly observed that this quartet came together over common fandom of such bands as Sunny Day Real Estate, Nation of Ulysses, Fugazi, and the Pixies. And yes, the formula is certainly there: cryptic lyrics are screamed over angular noisepunk, and done so with a passion and technical virtuosity that alone makes this band a worthy live act for the post-hardcore set.
I could also write this review about the legendary live antics and theatrics of LSF frontman Tim Harrington, because yes, the rumors about the fat man are true. From the on-stage costume changes (and the inevitable corollary: nudity), to the stand-up comedy in between numbers, to sing-along audience participation – LSF’s show is, simply put, a riot in every sense of the word.
Yet to reduce this band or Harrington's performance to some combination of the above variables is to ignore something very important going on. Where much of the music of the above-mentioned bands is fueled primarily by anger (the hyper-confrontational stance toward hypocrisy of Ian MacKaye and other Dischord forebears, for instance, or Black Francis's tendencies toward self-flagellation), Les Savy Fav is fueled by celebration. More specifically, as a performance act this band is dealing with themes as vital as the identity and authenticity of the self – preoccupations that align them with no less than the very heart of the punk/indie ethos.
The Ramones, the Clash, and the entire first wave created an ecstatic, eccentric space in which anyone was free to be a punk, free to be themselves. You didn’t need a million effects pedals, electronic synths, or a record deal; hell, you didn’t even have to sing or play your instruments that well. If you had a heart, you could rock. Later on, the ‘90s pushed punk’s logic to its outermost limits, as artists like Steven Malkmus and Kurt Cobain showed that any muttering, incomprehensible, perverted geek or outcast could be a punk rock star.
Today, the corpulent Harrington fills the space (no pun intended) formerly inhabited by these artists like few performers today can; he celebrates it, flaunts it, and thrives on it like no one else I can think of. Whether he’s pulling a table from backstage to stand on, weaving through the audience to let himself be grabbed, or just taking off his clothes, he is begging to let the audience see him, feel him, and join him. The show opened with Harrington’s scathing impersonation of a professor of cosmetic surgery, his costume complete with mortarboard, pipe, and his lecture to us deliberately asenine, about the importance of changing one’s face to change one’s life. Fast-forward an entire set, and the show’s finale was a minutes-long repetition of the line “This is my body, this is my body …” chanted to music dozens of times as Harrington took the stage in a robe, seemingly threatening to bare all. When the robe was finally cast off, he was, to the crowd’s shocked amazement, clad in skin-tight white tights with internal organs drawn all over them!
In each of these bizarre, disgusting, captivating moments, and numerous ones in between, no message is driven home more often than an invitation to reveal oneself, be oneself, drop the phony bullshit and party. Again, this is not MacKaye’s angst, this is Joey Ramone’s bliss – finding liberty through finding one’s genuinely authentic voice, and sharing it with everybody.
I’ll rate this show as a 9 mainly because the antics sometimes veered too far toward spectacle – the comedy, the flamboyant gestures, and everything else were un-missable, but they also sometimes distracted from what brought me to the show in the first place: the wicked music (a set heavy with songs from 2004’s Inches that also fortunately included, among other highlights, ‘Raging in the Plague Age’ from the new Australian Tour EP Plagues and Snakes). In fact, some of the most enjoyable moments of the show for me were when I took a cue from my totally wasted friend and decided to close my eyes and just listen instead of watching. Yet to have as my one complaint the fact that the singer was actually trying too hard to get me off is refreshing, and hardly a complaint at all.
Although Harrington has said les savy fav stands for “nothing outside of itself,” it’s been suggested by many that the phrase is French slang for something like “fucking punk rock.” If you think punk is really not about a way of playing guitar or shouting, but is more fundamentally the exercise of freeing the self from social expectations and prejudices – a spectacular revolt against conformity – then the translation couldn’t be more apt.
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