CMJ: Thursday

News Article
Pitchfork
October 24, 2008
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Photos by Francis Chung ; Above: Crystal Castles

Bearsuit [Cake Shop; 6:30 p.m.]


If there's any band that embodies the old punk ideal that anybody with ideas and a bit of imagination can make music, it's Bearsuit . On 2005's Cat Spectacular and this year's Oh:Io , they've shown themselves to be among the finest purveyors of explosive, schizoid, kitchen-sink indie pop, sort of like Los Campesinos! with more Deerhoof. And more BIFF! BANG! POW!: They played at Cake Shop wearing capes and face paint.


From plenty of other bands, that sort of costume could come off as a thinly veiled attempt to compensate for lousy tunes, but for Bearsuit, it's just the final step in transforming six mild-mannered English girls and guys into the indie superheroes suggested by their (head-snapping) breakneck tunes, from Cat Spectacular 's "Rodent Disco" and "Chargr" to the new album's "Foxy Boxer" and "Keep It Together, Somehow". Lead vocals are split between Lisa Horton's energetic alto and Iain Ross's matter-of-fact Graham Coxon murmur, backed by plenty of shrieks and shouts, while all manner of synths, samples, reckless drum patterns, and fuzzed-out bass lines careen around them.


Naturally, Bearsuit had no trouble finding the balls to ask for interaction from the very first song, Oh:Io 's "Jupiter Force"-- they say Jupiter, we say Force... or else a baby dies!-- and the decent-sized crowd (especially at this time slot, and for a criminally under-recognized UK band) complied. Forthcoming single "Muscle Belt" commanded us to "dance for my love." Introducing another recent 7" side, the bouncy "More Soul Than Wigan Casino", Ross self-deprecatingly calls his band "the least soulful" in all of humanity. A cape is such a lightweight thing, but that and wearing underwear outside your clothes are pretty much all that separates Superman from Clark Kent.


Fujiya & Miyagi [Webster Hall; 9 p.m.]


At this point, just about a month after the release of latest album Lightbulbs , we know what Fujiya & Miyagi are and aren't. Four people, not two, from England, not Japan, they methodically (de)construct rubbery krautrock grooves and sleek keyboards into sproingy dance-pop songs with whispery vocals about, like, all kinds of random stuff: from shoes and knee bones and not actually being Japanese to their own band name, dishwashers, and Lena Zavaroni. They're at their best when they're at their least straightforward. The new LP doesn't quite have the peaks of 2006's Transparent Things , but Fujiya & Miyagi still put on a fine, if eventually a little samey, performance of songs from both records-- the drummer was particularly impressive-- while speaking little (if at all) between songs. I think that was because they're Japanese.


Crystal Castles [Webster Hall; 10:30 p.m.]


I'd heard Crystal Castles were awesome live, and I knew their ominous lo-fi electro-punk retro-futurist "pummel-throb"-- Tom Breihan's final compound phrase there nails it -- made their remixes and 2008 self-titled debut LP some of my favorite things of the past couple years that I never really thought of as my own personal favorite things. Their live show last night was an experience, and I don't even know if I wanna talk about it because I almost don't want to corrupt it. You know? The Toronto duo of analogue noise-maker Ethan Kath and singer/crowd-surfer/demonic pixie/red-wine-baptismal-pourer-to-her-supplicating-masses Alice Glass have played around the world now, and they've done shows in New York a few times. But usually at smaller-capacity spots like Studio B and the Mercury Lounge. I doubt when they played the medium-ish (1,800?)-size Webster Hall last year opening for Metric they looked out upon such a teeming, frothy ocean of bobbing heads, pumping fists, moving bodies.


So much movement, I'm amazed Francis could catch any of it on camera. Hit the strobes, out comes Glass-- Kath off to the side in his hood, they have a touring drummer too-- and she goes on to spend an agonizingly brief set shouting out fractured, electro-tweaked vocals from on top of the monitors. Or sprawled out in the crowd's upstretched arms. Or writhing on the stage floor. Clearly, nobody in here is an exorcist.


Anyway, she looked terrifyingly fearless, and the audience returned the trust-- crowd-surfers would jump up on stage, then promptly dive back into the mob. I can never even remember most of the words (sometimes they just come out sounding like scary-movie effects), but they played basically the entire record. It was kind of like a dance party that's also a positive, subliminally erotic black mass. Nobody around me had seen anything like it, including the bartender-- who you'll be too busy spazzing out over Crystal Castles to have to visit during one of their killer sets.