Young Adult Fiction, Fashion Bath, The Dirty Kicks, Basmati and Teen Dream
Friday, February 11 at The National
This show was one of the occasional shows that happen at The National, where young local bands are recruited to play in return for selling all of the tickets to the show themselves. It’s much more humane than a true pay-to-play system, but it is somewhat similar. Young Adult Fiction headlined one of these shows last Friday, and their manager asked me to come out and check them out. I’d liked what I heard online by them, and had been meaning to catch one of their shows, so I was up for it. What I wasn’t sure of was what would be in store for me where the opening bands were concerned. The answer to that question turned out to be quite, uh, interesting.
Young Adult Fiction, Fashion Bath, The Dirty Kicks, Basmati and Teen Dream
Friday, February 11 at The National
This show was one of the occasional shows that happen at The National, where young local bands are recruited to play in return for selling all of the tickets to the show themselves. It’s much more humane than a true pay-to-play system, but it is somewhat similar. Young Adult Fiction headlined one of these shows last Friday, and their manager asked me to come out and check them out. I’d liked what I heard online by them, and had been meaning to catch one of their shows, so I was up for it. What I wasn’t sure of was what would be in store for me where the opening bands were concerned. The answer to that question turned out to be quite, uh, interesting.
But first, before I could even find out what I was in for, I managed to miss the first two bands completely. All ages matinee shows were once my saving grace, but at this point in my life, they are often the bane of my existence. I rushed right over to The National as soon as I got out of work, and arrived only a little more than an hour after doors had opened, but I still didn’t get inside until The Dirty Kicks were playing. In order to shorten the between-set breaks, all of the bands were sharing equipment, and I’m sure that was a really awesome idea where everyone involved in running the show was concerned, but it made my late arrival even more problematic than it otherwise could have been. Sorry Teen Dream and Basmati. I’ll catch you guys sooner or later. (NOTE: Our intrepid photographer did make it to the show in time to catch Basmati, so that’s them above this paragraph.)
As I said, The Dirty Kicks were playing when I arrived. They’re a four-piece rock band who reminded me somewhat of The Strokes, only most of their songs were a good bit slower than The Strokes generally are. The result of this depressed tempo was a loss of energy, which did a great deal to hamper the success of what The Dirty Kicks were trying to do. The riffs they had weren’t too bad, and I feel like they could have worked if the band had taken a different approach–a faster and more energetic one. Instead, I just felt like I was at the most boring Strokes show ever. What was really fascinating about The Dirty Kicks, who seemed to evoke the strongest crowd response of the night, was the way their singer–a bespectacled beanpole wearing a rather incongruous leather jacket–had a large number of girls in the crowd all but swooning at his feet (see photographic evidence above). I could tell that the crowd contained a lot of friends of the bands on the bill, so I’m not sure if what I saw was just one big ironic inside joke that I lacked the context for, but if not, then maybe the “slowed-down Strokes” style is just waiting for the right band to take it all the way to the top of the charts. Could the Dirty Kicks be that band? Watch this space, y’all.
Next were Fashion Bath, a bizarre trainwreck of a band that I spent all set trying to comprehend, without success. The biggest point in their favor is the talent of their guitarist, whose catchy riffs and excellent sound (blasting out of the tiniest half-stack amp I’ve ever seen) were almost the only thing I liked about their band. The band featured three other members. Their keyboard player filled the role of bassist, playing along with the guitarist in synth presets that just made the basslines sound weird. He also had a laptop that augmented the drumming with programmed beats, and thank goodness for that, because the drummer was probably the sloppiest timekeeper I’ve ever seen play in a band. He “cheated” by skipping beats in the middle of measures frequently, and still sometimes managed to lose his place in the songs, especially at the ends of fills. If the band had had to rely solely on him for rhythm, they’d have been sunk.
Their lineup was rounded out by a singer who was armed with both a theremin and a shiny new Gibson SG guitar. I soon realized that the reason for the shiny newness of the guitar was that the singer almost never played it. He’d strum a few chords during guitar solos on some of the songs, but for 90% of Fashion Bath’s set, the guitar hung idly from his shoulders, ignored. The theremin solos he added to some of the songs were far more interesting, and if he’d quit bothering to bring his guitar onstage and just stick to singing and theremin, his additions to the band would probably be a lot more interesting. But his singing was melodramatic and over-the-top a lot of the time, and he had a fondness for the sort of wordless high-pitched babbling croons that characterize Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction’s most pretentious moments. Visually, his long, flowing blonde hair was more reminiscent of Mother Love Bone’s Andy Wood, who also is a good touchstone for what this singer could be capable of at his best–over-the-top glam metal starpower, but in an awesome way. He should work on that, and on writing more real lyrics for his songs to replace the wordless gibberish babble. Then he and his guitarist should start over with a real bass player and a decent drummer, and see where they get with that. Hell, I’m feeling magnanimous–keep the keyboard player too. Just don’t make the band’s sound so reliant on his parts. This is constructive criticism, guys. It’s for your own good.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Young Adult Fiction. The band who made the evening worth the price of admission–and thank god for that, because I really did have to pay the cover charge to get in (no press passes on pay-to-play shows… boo). The first thing I noticed about this band is that one of their guitarists is a dead ringer for Pavement’s Steve Malkmus (again, see photographic evidence above). This probably leads to a fair amount of lazy comparisons to Pavement, but I myself will not take that easy way out. In fact, Young Adult Fiction don’t much remind me of Pavement. Instead, I found myself thinking of another 90s indie rock band–Built To Spill. They don’t have the tendency towards jam-band guitar heroics that Doug Martsch and company have been indulging in more recent years; instead, Young Adult Fiction bring to mind Built To Spill’s poppiest moments, on albums like Keep It Like A Secret and Perfect From Now On. The driving rhythms and distorted guitars are the sort of thing you don’t hear too much in the indie scene these days, with everybody far more interested in sounding like The Shins or Animal Collective. I, for one, never understood that. I may like the indie sound, but I’m a punk rocker at heart, and I want to see bands rock out. Young Adult Fiction satisfy that desire, jumping around, waving their guitars in the air, and doing plenty of stomping on distortion pedals during high-powered choruses. The biggest rock-out moment of the set came when their drummer traded places with the Malkmus-lookalike guitarist and bashed out a couple of his own songs. He acquitted himself admirably as a frontman–a statement that is less true of the guitarist’s turn as drummer, though he still kept time better than the drummer for Fashion Bath–and ended one of the songs with a blazing solo, during which he fell to the floor and rolled around on his back. This song also featured a stage invasion by half a dozen or so of YAF’s friends, as well as several members of the opening bands, who danced and ran around with wild abandon as the drummer played his songs. Instrument switching is not something I generally approve of, as I feel like it usually brings down the overall quality of a band’s set. But under the circumstances, it was a welcome interlude.
Where the Richmond indie scene is concerned, Young Adult Fiction are definitely a band to keep your eye on. Their five-song CD-R demo, Paradise Birds, is just as good a representation of their sound as was the live set I saw last Friday, and the band is hoping to press it up as a real EP sometime soon. So keep an eye out for that, but until then, make sure you catch them when they play live around town. If last Friday was any indication, you’re sure to get an entertaining show.
