But I Was There: Voxtrot @ the Troubadour, 11/1/06

Voxtrot, "Your Biggest Fan" - My number one complaint about modern relations between the sexes - or, more accurately, about modern relations between girls and me, since I couldn't give less of a shit about the belt-level doin's and transpirin's of other dudes - is that it always falls on my shoulders to make the first move. I know that sounds egotistical, but I honestly don't say that out of any egotisical conviction that society ought to rework itself for me; for the lack of a gentler way of putting it (not that I'd necessarily be interested in one anyway), when you grow up fat, you tend to learn lessons that don't necessarily get unlearned just because you literally manage to sweat yourself in half. For instance:

Voxtrot shared a bill last night with two bands I didn't think I'd ever heard of, one of which was named Low Vs. Diamond. This being Los Angeles, Jen and Alex and I rolled up to the door around 9:30, maybe 15 minutes into LvD's set, and promptly set about ignoring them entirely - not that they sounded bad, of course, but anyone with a brain in their head does two things immediately upon walking into a concert, namely (1) hit up the merch table and (2) overpay for a drink or two. By the time we wandered over to the stage, I was well into my Seven & Seven and LvD were well into their set, which didn't sound like anything particularly special; not being much of a shoegaze kiddie by nature, I tend to pop a big rubbery one at best for bands who are like OOO TEH FEEBDACK AND TEH LOWDNESS at the expense of actual tunefulness, but LvD appeared to be at least marginally superior to most of the tedious reference points to which I kept comparing it. And then, all of a sudden, three things happened:

1. The band suddenly started playing Colored Shadows' "Tiger Mask"
2. A light goes off in my head, and I immediately start howling at Jen about whether LvD might be the new name which Colored Shadows adopted earlier this year, and
3. I notice a bewitchingly cute indie girl trying to catch my eye so that she can nod to confirm it.

To a functional human being, of course, the obvious course of action would be to immediately strike up a conversation with this girl; I have a hard enough time catching the bartender's eye, let alone some bewilderingly indie-erudite fox (seriously, I've been pimping Colored Shadows like Alexander Fleming was probably pimping penicillin and I've only had like four people bite even a little bit, so this was about as shockingly gift-wrapped an invitation as I'm ever likely to get). So naturally I took no action whatsoever, even as their set went on and we kept playing The Sideways Glances Oh Shit Did I Just Get Caught Looking Oh Wait Isn't That The Point game - a game which, to be fair, is at least a little thrilling in one sense, although in the more-crucialsleeping-alone sense it unreservedly chokes on horsedong; when the set wrapped up, I went to go grab another drink and she'd vanished by the time I got back (although I later noticed her being aggressively chatted up by some meticulously scruffy hipster type, leading me to vow once again that come the revolution, bearded hipster fuxxx are going to find themselves up against the wall the split second that I get done putting a cap in every actress on the planet). Looking back now, of course, I'm disgusted by my conduct; given that she went to such mathematically precise and perfect lengths to give me an opening, I really should have at least attempted to say something, even if all I ended up doing was paying her back for her knowledge with a story about some creepy dude trying to hit on her about which she could have laughed later with all her friends. Instead, it looks like it's suicide for me again. Le sigh.

MY POINT IN GIVING WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION TO THE INTERNET, however, is motivated simply by a desire to give you, Gentle Reader, the most circumspect picture of why I go to Voxtrot's shows that I can think of. I have a refreshingly clear commercial directive with Voxtrot, namely that whenever they come to town, I go see them; I've literally been to every gig they've ever played in Los Angeles, a statistic which probably sounds impressive until I sheepishly point out that this means that I've seen them three times. Still, though, that means I've seen them more often than I've seen LCD Soundsystem or M.I.A. or the Arcade Fire or Art Brut or etc., and even if I'm not anywhere near as big a fan of Voxtrot as I am of any of those artists, it's still a pretty striking statistic - living in the cradle of the end of civilization as I do, you'd think I'd have found some local band to make my second home rather than some (criminally) as-yet-unsigned band coming straight outta Austin once every solstice.

Part of it, of course, has to do with the music; Voxtrot simply write the kind of good songs that, if there's a just God ruling over the public's music-consumption-related habits, ought to guarantee them some semblance of a career in the U.K. at the very least, and as long as I've been aware of them, they've been striving to expand their sound. Obviously, it's not always a walkoff success; I like their most recent single "Your Biggest Fan" plenty (yay for bands taking aim at Dexys Midnight Runners), but both of my favorite Voxtrot songs come from their first EP, and apart from "The Warmest Part Of The Winter" (made available only on a compilation so impossibly obscure that I hesitate to count it as a proper release), I haven't heard anything since that's really been much of a threat. No, I think my almost magnetic attraction to their shows has something more to do with the context they create for themselves, a context which I doubt I could even explain but which I'm positive I understand tacitly and completely. Voxtrot's shows are just so refreshingly uncomplicated, even down to the interactions I have with other people in attendence - I never wind up questioning any of my impulses, a circumstance so otherwise arcane in my life as to be refreshing even when I'm straightforwardly fucking myself over. And needless to say, when this baggage-free atmosphere extends to the music, it's just one of the best times at a concert that I can imagine; "Your Biggest Fan" might not be all that much of a song on the record, but live, when I'm literally concerned with (1) deciding whether or not I like it and (2) reacting accordingly, it's a genuine highlight of my week, especially the last minute and change where the song just suddenly stands up straight and finds a way to look you right in the eye musically. It's the kind of phenomenon that has me dead-set convinced that I'll be seeing them the next time they're back in town, and the next time and the next time and the next and so on, right up until they start opening for some dreary band like The We Are Scientists or someone with an unappealing fanbase of equivalent disingenuousness (except for Brian and Jessica, of course). I mean, can you blame me? Voxtrot shows are where life happens, and anyone who knows anything about liking music knows that those are the shows to which you want to go. Even if the results are disastrous. I mean what the fuck. (Click here to pre-order the "Your Biggest Fan" single directly from the band)

Albert Hammond Jr., "Cartoon Music For Super Heroes" - Even as they get increasingly uncool, I can't bring myself to even attempt to hide my unabashed fandom of the Strokes; time may be marching on, but in my head it'll be the tail end of 2001 forever. That being said, I think it's kind of striking how the most directly Strokes-esque album to surface from the band in the five years since Is This It is arguably guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.'s solo debut Yours To Keep, especially since describing it as anything more than a grip of (admittedly) remarkably easily-digestible guitar pop songs is doing it a disservice on a downright Beach Housian level. Of course, one of the things that made Is This It so thrilling in the first place was the way it revealed itself over time to be basically "just a record" - it's always going to be refreshing, after all, when an album can celebrate its status as a product without getting tiresomely cutesy (YOU HEAR ME, SECOND SCISSOR SISTERS ALBUM?), and Is This It is (1) an album as celebratory of its progenitors as any I've ever come across in my life and (2) just about the least laborious record ever committed to wax, both in terms of what it demands from the listener and what went into its genesis. Yours To Keep, I think, is the only Strokes record to come down the pike so far that actually feels like it was made in the same shrugged-off spirit as Is This It - it's certainly possible (if not an outright certainty) that Hammond's songs have been meticulously crafted and there's not a single misstep on the album, but it sounds like he just kinda sat down with his friends to cut a record and stood up holding the most enjoyable album Elliot Smith never recorded. And while the easy critical escape hatch would be to simply point out his pedigree, it's not really a very convincing response - after all, it's not like the Strokes came out of some vacuum of expectations in any respect, from their tunes out to their clothes, and I suppose it's possible to view Is This It as such a frighteningly self-effacing triumph simply because of how thoroughly they managed to satisfy all those expectations with their first stroke of the pen to the point where there haven't been too many left to satisfy since. That, I think is the proper context in which Yours To Keep deserves to be appreciated - as an album that'd exist whether you supported its existence or not, because making albums like this is just what these guys do. (Click here to buy Yours To Keep from Amazon.co.uk)

The Harlem Shakes, "Carpetbaggers" - If you limit your definition of "promising" to the strict boundaries of "promising in terms of my friends' reactions", then I honestly doubt I could think of five bands on the planet more promising than the Harlem Shakes, a band whose demo rocketed them to the attention of one James M. F. Cobo last year with the kind of violence most bands would kill to engender in me. Of course, as a hate-filled shut-in, this really only means that I got twenty people to admit to liking the Shakes, but what's crucial is that I barely had to try at all to get them to admit it - they seem to be one of those rare band who can come up with songs that only require me to gently elbow my friends, and if "Carpetbaggers" is any indication, I might not even need to do that for too much longer. My main complaint with their demo, you see, was the way that most of the drama of its songs hinged on your ability to stay with the songs through the violent transitions between sections with different tempos, and while I've certainly been no stranger to schizophrenic pop music in the past, it's an incredibly dangerous game to play - all you need to make your audience do, after all, is go "Huh?" instead of "YEAH!" just once, and you've lost them for the whole song. "Carpetbaggers", however, seems entirely free from this nonsense; it does see a huge change in tempo towards the end, but for the most part it's just incredibly full-steam-ahead modern rock song stuffed wtih insanely catchy hooks and deleriously fun "OH-OH"s and such, all delivered with metronomic precision - in other words, it might as well have been engineered from the ground floor up to show off what the Shakes are best at. And when the song inevitably changes towards the end, it barely even grates - after two and a half minutes of uncompromisingly great nu-garage fireworxxx, it practically feels like exhaling. Suffice it to say that if their forthcoming Burning Birthdays EP has another few songs designed with half the intelligence of "Carpetbaggers", we're all in for a treat; when a band as good as the Harlem Shakes demonstrates the commitment to improving their output that they show on the E.P.'s lead track, the necessity of the quote-marks around "promising" only grows more and more difficult to discern. (The Burning Birthdays EP isn't available yet [although you bet your sweet bippy that I'll be announcing it here once it is], but in the meantime, you can visit the Shakes' MySpace page for more songs and more news)