We Can Make Forever Last Forever (Apes and Androids, Mercury Lounge, 1/19/08)

I was hoping I wouldn't have to pretend.

It makes sense - it's on a stage, it's a performance, therefore it's theater, right? - that the audience at a rock show should have to engage a certain suspension of disbelief.  "This song must mean as much when they sing it now as it did when they first wrote it."  "They are not doing this for the money but for my love."  "The Rolling Stones aren't too old to be doing that."

"My favorite band really is that good."

Apes & Androids (myspace) was conceived by singers/guitarists/keyboardists David Tobias and Brian Jacobs (there's also a lead keyboardist, a bassist, a drummer); the pair's previous band,  Call Florence Pow, was started a decade ago when they were in high school.  Jacobs went to Columbia University, which would set the band up as a nice counterpoint to another CU Band of the Moment (A&A is sexy, shifty, silly; Vampire Weekend is limp-dicked, straightforward, dull), and which might be where A&A/CFP picked up its fervent following.

I've been hearing how awesome the band's live shows have been for a couple years, now, how they not only rock the rock but go the extra mile (giant stage-hugging monsters, zombie dancers, cheerleaders, traditional Korean rhythm ensembles).  And I've come to love them from afar:  Just recently I waxed desperately in anticipation of their first release, Blood Moon; late last week, the band upped four new songs to their myspace and I'd been unable to take those off repeat.

I walked in Saturday night expecting to be BLOWN AWAY.  I was not BLOWN AWAY.  A&A's live sound is sorta limp, y'all.

While I'm pondering why, let me say that I'm exactly zero percent disappointed in Blood Moon (which is available for purchase on the band's site; if you buy the CD - and you should - you can instantly download the mp3s).  It is sexy, shifty, silly stuff; overthought, perhaps, but hardly opaque.  I'd had this fear it would wind up being some sort of heavy-handed concept album; thankfully, it isn't.  At least I don't think it is.  Maybe there's one buried underneath all the fun.

It's a really, really good record.  You should be listening to it right now!  Here, I'll help a little:

Apes & Androids - Nights of the Week (mp3) (buy!)

All of A&A's songs come with varying degrees of WTF, but the official single from the record - the Beckish "Golden Prize" - gets aggressively weird.  "Nights" is much more accessible.  It sounds like a lost Cars track!

The music on Moon nods at and tugs toward plenty of directions.  "Make Forever Last Forever" distracts by relying on the phrase "riders on the storm," "Sweetest Secret" rips its chorus from "Cross-eyed & Painless," the triumphant "Riverside" starts as a dalliance with hippie pop and Chicago Transit Authority hornage.  I swear that someday I'll find the Bowie track from whence the end of "Hot Kathy" oooooooohzed.  Folks cry that the band defies genrelization as if they're doing something radical and new.  Which doesn't feel right, given how retro the cumulative effect is.  The band doesn't go any new places, it just goes more of them.  It needs a phone that works in artglamsynthprogfunkarenametalnewavachusetts.

"Nights" may not be particularly representative of Moon's material (none of them are, or all of them are).  If anything it's more fluid than most of the other songs:  The lovely guitar riff doesn't hop, it steps; the vocals during the verses purr; there's a soft synthy net held underneath almost the whole thing.

That triangle is hilarious.  Ding!

More typical of the thirteen songs on Moon (eighteen tracks include an intro/outro and three negligible bridge clips) are the choppy claps, the percussive "Oh-Oh, Oh-Oh, Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh..," the hyper-ticky add-ins that build toward the end of "Nights."  But for all the electrobusyness and clipped-in gobbledygook,  there are cavernous chunks of silence at the heart of most of A&A's songs.  Sounds come and go, chopping at the air, but they don't hang around.  The silence is a constant, ducking and dodging and reasserting itself.  Listening to the center of their music is a bit like staring at a bubble work its way back and forth through a lava lamp and no, I'm not stoned right now thank you very much.

The other interesting thing about the band's sound is that the instruments are largely superfluous.  There are spazzy bursts and enjoyable interludes, but very few necessary riffs (that big fat (and regularly clipped) bassline in "Radio" would be one exception,).  It's all on the vocals.  There's a lot of four-part harmony (which invites Queen comparisons... though given A&A's sci-fi bent, they're as likely inspired by Ligeti's Requiem as A Night at the Opera); even solo vocals are reverbed and distorted to take up extra aural room.  The character of the music is built both on intricacy and bombast, and the arrangements are confident and meticulous; but deep down this stuff hinges on the equivalent of a handclapping barbershop quartet.  And matching striped vests and skimmer hats would be SO GLAM.

These aren't bad things - I do like this record - but contribute, I think, to what's lacking in the live show.  Because live, the vocals they rely on often sound flat (something more amplification or a little reverb might fix) and aren't all that accurate.

And the silences wind up feeling like dead air.  The space that's dynamically preserved on record just feels like... waiting.  The band doesn't feel underehearsed, or like everyone's mentally counting out steps.  It's awkward, and either they need to supplement the material with held notes - when they played live, didn't Queen just let Brian May go nuts? - or find a way to give those gaps some tension, some life.

A lot of it might just be that, for a band that's built its reputation on its live act, it doesn't seem they've played live all that much.  They've done occasional local gigs - what, six or seven a year? - and odd appearances in Philly or Western NY.  They're shop-tested, not road-tested.  A skit featuring an argument between the giant silver masks hung in a semi-circle around the stage was hilarious, but about a third too long; sequences where the stage went dark and playback kicked in didn't give the audience anything to do.  When the leads aren't singing, they're animated, but the poses they strike - the guitarists pressed back-to-back while doing parallel runs, ooo, how metal - feel too much like they're playing at rock star.  I'm sure it will all be better once the metallic face paint and shiny neckerchiefs stop being costumes, start being uniforms.

There were a couple positive surprises.  The comparatively serious and lush "Doyle is Dead" (which has something to do with elaborate suicide of a Sherlock Holmes scholar, maybe) was captivating.  For "Golden Prize," everyone strapped on a marching tom; the song's answering machine message was recited live by Jacobs, his vocals goosed electronically.

"Hot Kathy," the song you'd like to leave the building cooing, came early in the set.  (Several audience members orgasmed all over themselves at its start; a pair of guest drummers crowd-surfed with their instruments.)  The night ended instead with "Creepy Girls," a holdover tune from Call Florence Pow that's got a bigboomPhantom of the Opera climax.    No encore, and the band didn't prepare the sort of special stunt performance for which it's come to be known.  No traditional Korean room-hugging monster zombie cheerleaders.  Tragic.  (Someone did take the time to tie ribbons around every copy of the CD, which was nice.)

The shiny howling people are fun, I'm not saying they're not.  They've got a strong sense of direction, they've got great songs, they've got a willingness to be weird and a healthy sense of humor about themselves.  (Roger Corman-level production values help check any pretentiousness, and if any band called out - in four-part harmony, no less - for a smoke machine, this is it.)  It's great that they get up there to rock out, and it's nice for them that they've got a very supportive fanbase.  Sure, I'll see them again - the band's next NYC show is February 28th at the Hiro Ballroom - but will be drastically lowering my expectations, pretending I don't know that it's supposed to sound so much better than it does.  [UPDATE:  The Hiro show is free.  RSVP (ugh) here.]

Also there, and generally happier:

Brooklyn Ski Club

Fists with Your Toes

Look at Me, I Made a Blog

Stereogum

Flickr sets by sgoralnick, minaka

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Keep Moving West Dept.: 

Jeff Baum, 100%A++++++++++.

Not that I'm ever going to wind up there, myself.

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"[Mitt Romney] looks like the American president in a Canadian movie" - David Letterman

tags: apes and androids  concert reviews  

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