Lovvers @ Cake Shop | 7.16.09

LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ Cake Shop
July 16, 2009 | Lovvers

photo by Michelle Cable

Maybe you don’t like to tell strangers all the dirty details about your nighttime adventures, but I sure do! So I’m gonna really spill guts about my first time with Lovvers last week. They were fast and rough right from the get-go, and they made me feel real good – giddy, even! Then they got a little sloppier, no more special than plenty of other punk rockers I’ve spent the night with, and I started thinking, “Man, maybe I got too excited about this…” But right as I began to flag, they paused for a kiss – seriously – and got back to sockin’ it to me so hard that when it was all over I was like, “Hell yeah, lets do it again!” But I guess they were too tired or something. So we parted ways and they split town to sock it to some other lucky little chickies all over the coast – which, to be honest, made me want ‘em even more!

That’s right, kittens: UK punk band Lovvers gave it up to New York City for the first time last Thursday at Cake Shop. And word on the street is that they’re coming back for more.

Lovvers already hit America once this year to play SXSW and to record their first LP with Pat Kearns, who also produced for the late great Exploding Hearts. I could hear echoes of that Exploding Hearts power pop – but way more fuzzed up – when Lovvers kicked off the show with their new album’s title track, “OCD Go Go Girls.” They burst out at a good clip, but a few songs into it and the sound got sludgier: the drums muddied, the guitar didn’t wail as clean…not to say the songs were bad, but they’d lost their bounce. At least visually the band was still fun. Well, Shaun Hencher, the lead singer was. He’d lurch into the crowd all knock-kneed and bent over, really getting in our faces. (The rest of the band stood onstage facing each other like Hencher wasn’t even there.)

Like I said, I was starting to think that maybe Lovvers weren’t so special after all. Though in their defense, they were playing to a sort of unusual crowd, an LES grab bag if you will. Between songs, the hair-gelled, polo-shirted, intermittently fist-pumping guy next to me leaned in and said, “Jeez, I didn’t think this singer would be so in-your-face,” grinning like he was catching a novelty act. A couple of women were taking nonstop photos and, sure,  some must’ve been on assignment, but I doubt that explained the hulking girl in front of me. (Most show photographers don’t stand stock-still taking close-ups of the band members’ faces.) But hey, I was still rocking along just fine, seeing where the set would take us, when “Wait a minute!” Hencher stopped the music, grabbed the big ol’ picture-snapping chick by the chin, and gave her a tender kiss on the lips. (I asked later if they knew each other: she was a total stranger.) Well all right! It was so fun, so unexpected: the kiss that breathed new life into the show. After that, Lovvers revved it up and banged through a couple of those real catchy, poppy songs that work so well for ’em, we in the audience stepped our game up and really started moving, and BAM! Lovvers first-ever set in New York was over far too soon.

“You know, this was our first time, but we’ll be back on August 1 and it’ll be a lot better,” Michael the bassist told me after the show. They’ll be playing with Sundelles and the Vivian Girls/Woods project Babies, so if I were you I’d head on down to Death By Audio for sloppy seconds.

by Erin Sheehy

ps - If you dig their music, but still want a better feel for ‘em, check out Lovvers’ goofy and photo-filled blog.