Brooklyn Vegan Pre-SXSW Show @ The Knitting Factory | 3.15.10

Banjo Or Freakout is a bedroom recording project recently turned live band that sounds a lot like, well, a bedroom recording project recently turned live band. It has the flaws you’d expect: the band is competent but slightly uncertain, the vocals falter and slip out of tune in a way that does not sound intentional or stylistic, most of the songs pick one rhythmic and melodic idea and just hit it on the head for about five minutes, the whole set is smothered in synth washes and reverb that hide all the melodies, no one really moves around much. This last was especially surreal at the Knitting Factory, given the generous size of the stage and the absolute swarm of photographers pacing the front with bizarre, spiderlike stabilizing contraptions and poking their lenses out from behind the amps. The obsessive documentation seemed to call for a little bit more than Alessio Natalizia and company were willing to give us, a fact that crystalized in the moment when I saw the videographer do a dramatic zoom in on the hands of the bassist as he played the same single note he’d been playing for about three minutes. Then the three Londoners in The Wave Pictures came on and obliterated the entire Banjo Or Freakout set with one blistering guitar lick.

The Wave Pictures were immensely charming throughout, and the clear-cut lines of their songs were a relief after the reverby vagueness of the previous set. They won the audience over immediately with a straight forward bass-drums-guitar setup, amazingly dextrous solos, pleasantly unpolished gang vocals, fantastic old-school pop songwriting loaded with catchy melodies, self-deprecating humor (at one point frontman David Tattersall, who looks just like a long lost Culkin sibling, accidentally stepped on his guitar cord mid-solo, tearing it out of the instrument, and then stopped the song, explaining that “the abrupt guitar solo ending” was “how all the kids are doing it in London”), and sharp lyrics that recall Jonathan Richman in their blunt perceptiveness, though Tattersall is possessed of a little less cutesy naivete and a little more self-destructive rock n roll attitude (sample lyric: “I don’t need therapy because I have cigarettes”). The band seemed truly happy to be onstage and grateful for the audience, which had now filled out to the point where the room was like a PBR-infused sauna, and the set reached a climax of adorableness when Tattersall brought drummer Jonny Helm out front to bashfully sing a love song written for a girl with a lazy eye, arms clasped nervously behind his back as the audience clapped along. It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many people straight up beaming at a rock show.

It was hard to top the warmth of The Wave Pictures, and during WhoMadeWho’s extended soundcheck I was pretty skeptical. Some Scandinavian dudes in suspenders and eerily precise facial hair. A lot of loud synth noises. A drummer in an enormous cowboy hat? They looked like the kind of band that is supposed to be “fun,” but they turned out to be the kind of band that is actually FUN. The trio plays tight disco-pop, complete with dry, repetitive drums, octaval bass, guitar riffs that are way more about rhythm than melody, and vocals fed through a Korg. It’s the kind of thing I’d never have given a second chance on record, but it was absolutely hypnotic live, and the band completely owned the crowd. Tomas Hoefding and Jeppe Kjellberg crooned their falsetto melodies in a perfect unison, never landing a hair out of tune or dropping a beat, all while busting out (and pulling off) every single rock and roll move in the book, from walking the footlights to thrusting the mic into the audience for a singalong to the giant, spread-eagled leap to bring on the climax of a song. They never stopped dancing for a second, and they did all of this with an absolute seriousness that gave the whole show a deadpan comedic air, especially when they said things like “your thoughts are dirty” over and over in a rich, Danish-accented baritone while pointing at the audience. The girls to my left immediately declared them “really awesome,” and I had no choice but to agree. So did everyone else, judging from the thrashing of the crowd.

Norway’s Casiokids took the stage next, but aside from a few pockets of spastic dancing, they felt like a warmdown act for WhoMadeWho. Taking the same dry, disco rhythms and replacing the sassy falsetto and thick bass with childlike falsetto and a bunch of longwinded keyboard interludes, their summery pop songs, though skillfully executed, sounded a little flaccid at the end of the night, especially after the bravado of WhoMadeWho. The band tried to liven things up with fluttery hand gestures, a pineapple shaped shaker and many attempts at euphoric crescendos, but they weren’t quite enough to dislodge Kjellberg’s mustache from my mind, let alone the guitar riffs he delivered while writhing on his back.

by Gabriel Birnbaum