the venue: London Astoria
the date: Tue 4th Mar 2003
Sleaze...but in a pretty way. That's seemingly tonight's theme. Ok, so I cannot comment on the first support, C64 because I was stuck in a lift (I'd rather not go into the details...) but I mean: Har Mar Superstar...what more can you say?
A one-man cheese-warrior, crooning sleaze-adelic lurve songs while dancing his way down to his Y-fronts and gyrating like a professional lapdancer... It's frankly brilliant fun to watch. Even if the Astoria isn't warming up much beyond Zero, it takes more to keep him down. Or get him to keep his clothes on.
But nevermind reversed g-strings and porn star moves, is the music any good? Oh yeah! Aural pleasure of the warm and fuzzed-up kind. If you're of a sensitive nature you may occasionally chose to avert your eyes from the stage, but at no point would you want to miss a note of his funk-pop fest...
On to The Kills next, who initially couldn't seem more different, feverdrumming their dark rhythms into the audience like a rabid PJ Harvey after a couple of Viagra shots. Obvious references do point to Velvet Underground-style guitar drawls and the themes on display here aren't new. Instead what they are is shot full of fresh blood. Nevermind if this has been vampirically sucked from the 60's, how many other great bands indulge in that kind of sin. The Kills rock you from the insides of your bones out, without so much as seemingly breaking a sweat onstage. Sheer excellence.
At which point I'm wondering what is wrong with the audience as I can spot only around 10 people willing to dance, just a little...
Fortunately, things warm up reassuringly when the headline act comes on, with Karen O jumping onstage in a green and pink hotpant/t-shirt combo that makes her look like a cast member of some sort of acid-dream sex-crazed version of Sesame Street. Cute, and utterly fucked up. For the next hour the Yeah Yeah Yeah's thrash their way through a storming set of punk-rock pop, veering from the sweet to the demonic, but never any less than hypnotic and never any less than insane.
Yes, there's three members in the band, but this is very much Karen's show (who must be perfectly aware her initials now read K.O., as this is the state she reduces the audience into), whether she's showering the front row in champagne, giving Har Mar's love to the room or putting on bunny ears that someone throws at her feet. She's loving it. Every note of every song, every screeched-up Blondie-on-speed moment, every dark lyric she breathes out.
Good bands usually do either one of three things to you: They make you want to die at the sheer awesomeness; live purely on the high they give you; or start a band because whatever else could be as fucking ace as what you've just seen.
Tonight's bill has managed to do all of that.