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| Showtime:
The Strokes’ Casablancas at the Armory. |
This
Is It
By
John Brodeur
The
Strokes, South, the Loyalty
Washington
Avenue Armory, Oct. 6
For
all the silver spoons they supposedly came up choking on,
the five strapping young lads of the Strokes have had to work
hard to stay on their game. They’ve proved their mettle on
the live circuit time and time again, and last Friday, they
rolled into the Washington Avenue Armory in the final stage
of a yearlong tour to support their latest record (First
Impressions of Earth).
Throughout a 20-song set that primarily drew from First
Impressions and their 2001 debut (Is This It?),
the band sounded pristine and ready to rumble. Their reliability—I’ve
seen them twice before, and the playing never disappoints—puts
the onus on the shoulders of frontman Julian Casablancas.
It’s up to him to carry the show, and on Friday he seemed
up to the challenge, ad-libbing through older songs like “Last
Nite” and busting out some wonky dance moves on “You Only
Live Once.” His voice wasn’t half-bad either: The screams
on “Juicebox” were better live than on record (even though
he claimed to have “fucked that one up”), and he did his very
best lounge-singer impression on “Heart in a Cage.”
The few times his enthusiasm waned, it showed. On “Ask Me
Anything,” Casablancas repeatedly croaked, “I’ve got nothing
to say,” accompanied only by Nick Valensi on keyboard. The
recorded version is two minutes too long; live, it should
have been struck entirely. Same goes for the band’s flat encore
treatment of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”—Casablancas’
comment that they had “butchered a classic” was less an aside
than an admission.
But the band handily compensated for any shortcomings. You
really couldn’t build a better performing unit: Bassist Nikolai
Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti make a mighty economic
rhythm section, tight as a clock’s tick and rarely flashy;
Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. are equally as frugal with
their interlocking guitar licks, making their occasional lead
turns all the more dazzling.
The undeniable highlight of the show—and the band’s career,
thus far—was the First Impressions track “Vision of
Division.” The song’s dizzying compound of guitar riffs and
fusion-inspired soloing should be the band’s calling card,
even though the song contains some of Casablancas’ most dreadful
lyrics. It was also the only point in the evening when the
frantic strobe lighting was actually called for. (The rest
of the Strokes’ lightshow, like the music itself, was nicely
understated and hip.)
At the beginning of their support set, British quintet South
may have tried a bit too hard to sell themselves to the Strokes’
audience: Their first few numbers unimpressively mashed ’70s
disco-dance grooves (comparisons to the Bee Gees’ “More Than
a Woman” were unavoidable) with skanky guitar riffs that best
resembled, well, the Strokes. The true South were revealed
as they played on—the latter two-thirds of their set played
like ’90s Britpop (Bends Radiohead, early Oasis) crossed
with vintage New Order; they brought that second comparison
full-circle by gamely covering “Bizarre Love Triangle.”
Word has it that the Loyalty won their 30-minute opening slot
by grabbing more than 50 percent of the total vote count in
an online ballot—out of five nominated bands, even. Theirs
is a winning formula: Travis Gray’s vocals are more appealing
than most of his emo-pop counterparts, and the young (as in
fresh-out-of-study-hall) quartet showed a great deal of promise,
even when their stop-start rhythms overshadowed the hooks.
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