Hot Freaks

As it turns out, I didn't end up seeing Enon again on Saturday, electing instead to stay out with a bunch of those NYC ilXor mentalists after some ice skating in Central Park (slicing the ice to some Eminem, aw yeah), Ethiopian food and a pit stop at the Ding Dong (where I admired the vintage Circle Jerks poster on the wall as the DJ spun the likes of X, Bob Mould, the B-52's and the Cramps) before landing at a party on the LES... which I later realized, upon seeing the pics on her site, was Catherine Pita's shindig! (Thanks for letting us use yr stereo! I was one of the peeps in yr bedroom circled around the table with the bottle of ghetto-looking whiskey on it. That punch was, um... PINK.)

Er... where was I anyway? Oh yeah, Enon. So on Thursday a friend and I trekked out to Brooklyn in the freezing cold, through the newly-fallen snow (pretty, pretty). We got to Southpaw mid-way through first band Parts and Labor's set. Super-noisy, spazzy electronic geek-core. Not my bag, really, but fun to watch.

More my style were the second opener, Bloodthirsty Lovers. Kind of heavy pop, with a lot of synth. My friend Steve said they reminded him of Guided By Voices, which I didn't exactly see (but -- hey! -- look who they've opened for). They played one song where the lead singer sounded exactly like Alex Chilton (double hey! -- main Lover and ex-Grifter Dave Shouse is a fellow Memphis native).

Then the velvet curtains in front of the stage closed once more and we listened to the latest Spoon album over the sound system while waiting for Enon.

Somewhere in the middle of "All the Pretty Girls Go to the City", the curtains opened and the band launched right into "Pleasure and Privilege"... near the end of which Toko lost a bass string. Oops! But this little glitch early on was dealt with pretty well, even if it did seem to shake the band up a little when that damn bass string refused to get restrung quickly. Frontman John Schmersal got into the groove soon enough, wowing us with his stylin' rock star moves and rocking the mic for a series of less guitar-centric songs. While Toko was behind her bass or keyboards for most of the set, she later got her turn in the spotlight for a HOTT version of The Gun Club's "Sex Beat" as part of the encore.

Overall, it was a fun, high-energy show, with lots of onstage goofing with friends and other hometown Brooklyn supporters. (Google, google... looks like this person was also at the show, and he took a couple of pics. I believe I am in the amorphous blob of heads on the right of the top pic -- woo!) And I was psyched to hear my favorite song from the new album ("Sold!"). In fact, all but two songs from their main set were from High Society, which suited me just fine -- it's one of my favorites this year. One thing that did bug me just a bit was the band's reliance on their sampler, though I guess that's inevitable when you only have three band members onstage. And it seemed like John in particular didn't always want to be tethered to an instrument. Maybe time to add another member to the live lineup?

Posted by nstop at December 10, 2002 07:52 PM