IRT Magazine

Terminal 5 Manhattan

Wednesday, April 9, 2008What should be known as ‘Camel Cigarette Concert-Hall-Ballroom-Place’ provided the forum for a kickass live event this week. Entering the building I had to get past the many neon Camel logos and screens projecting a loop of smoke-more-tobacco infomercials before I could enjoy the surprise pleasure of Handsome Furs opening. While I bemoaned the misfortune of the Walkmen and White Rabbits ducking NYC in the midst of their joint tour, seeing Dan Boeckner on stage got me stoked for Wolf Parade’s upcoming release, Kissing The Beehive. Boeckner brought the raw vocals that hit you in the gut, while spouse Alexei Perry kept up with “minimalist” drums and sample beats. In concert it becomes clear that wifey ain’t pulling her own weight and you knew why they were an opening act. Immediately after their set the hall was consumed with the anxious energy of an impatient crowd. While the speakers played Wolf Parade’s “Modern World ” with Boeckner on vox, Spoon stepped in and lit up the place. All around were people singing along to some great performances of their new songs. The hipster too-cool-to-dance folk and recent-college-grad “I wish this was a frat party” crowd—which have both become barnacles on the Manhattan live scene—were in attendance, but most of the goers were legit fans. Some throwbacks from Telephono and of course the previous opus, Gimme Fiction, were interspersed between almost every track on the new album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Played live, the one dead-air track on Ga Ga…, “The Ghost of You Lingers,” was everything it isn’t in the studio: vaporous in its haunt and wholly unnerving. An hour fifteen in, while the brass accompaniments in “The Underdog” hit the crowd with blow-your-hair-back waves of sound, I thought the set had reached its crescendo. But the band played on: at least another eight songs with equal intensity and two two-song encores. The closeout song was “I Turn My Camera On,” one of the better dance-rock jams of recent years. And by then the fake fans had faded and the rest of the lot got down. And so I’ll restate this—a kickass live event. —Michael Montesano