You Say Party! We Say no!

Last Sunday Vancouver punk wonderkids You Say Party! We Say Die! were booked for a show at Chop Suey with Thunderbirds are Now!, Detroit’s newest touring crazy dance-rockers. Everyone who showed up at the show expecting three exclamation points worth of music were disappointed, as 2/3 of the punctuation had been held up at the border for lack of work visas. As a result the band has had to cancel all of their West Coast shows, and the situation appears to have escalated to the point where one member of the band may have been barred from the U.S. for five years.

This has happened several times this year, bands having to cancel or reschedule their shows because of problems getting into the United States in time for a soundcheck. It isn’t as though YSP!WSD! hasn’t played in the States before, because of course they have–they’ve played SXSW and toured the midwest with Pretty Girls Make Graves.

They’re talking to their lawyers now, but the crowd at Chop Suey had to be satisfied with White Gold and TAN!, and in the meantime YSP!WSD! will be touring again in Europe. Any plans you might have to see a band from outside the borders will depend on the whims of the guards, so don’t get too attached. (On the other hand, Australia’s adorable Architecture in Helsinki managed to break into the country and play a couple of fantastic shows this week.)

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Clap Your Hands Say What?

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is playing with Australian group Architecture in Helsinki tonight at the Showbox here in Seattle. The two also played to an all-ages audience at the Showbox last night, and the reports so far are good. I didn’t go.

So what, right? Here’s what: in my opinion, CYHSY singer Alec Ounsworth sounds too much like David Byrne. Eerily like Byrne. So much I thought their first single was the Talking Heads’ Lost Session Tapes or something.

BBC calls Ounsworth’s voice a “euphoric nasal yelp“. I call it something I’ll have to get used to.

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Saw We Are Scientists on Saturday

I saw We Are Scientists and Art Brut at Neumos Saturday night too, and I’m having an awfully hard time comparing them. Because they’re two entirely different groups of musicians.

We Are Scientists are nerds, the sort of guys that use the word consternated and mean it, the sort of guys that you’d want to share twelve pitchers of beer with just to keep the games of Guess the Animal going. Art Brut, on the other hand, is the kind of band you want to hang out with if it’s 1978 and you’re trashing a hotel room and, well, you need someone to help you lift this mattress out the window.

They’re just two different sounds, and you can’t compare a big sound band with a small sound band without grading the rock on a curve. All I’m saying is I don’t go to see Panda and Angel expecting them to sound as big as 3 Inches of Blood.

Sorry. Meta-music-nerdery and quibbling aside (what? I’m a meta quibbler. It’s how I roll.), I have to start by wishing I’d seen more of The Spinto Band, who were sunny and cute and should really play again some night when I’m not chatting out in the front bar. After We Are Scientists let their cranky-looking tech set up they strolled onstage and started right in on “Lousy Reputation,” although I didn’t notice because Keith Murray and his adorable bangs give me heart palpitations. I have trouble listening to With Love and Squalor all the way through but live I find the band engaging and, as they promise, vaguely danceable. The last time I saw them live I fell deeply in love and begged them to come back, and they didn’t let me down. By the end of the set Chris Cain had wandered into the audience with his (wireless?) bass, and my face hurt from grinning like a fool.

They closed the set with “The Great Escape” and Ian Catskilkin turned up to play a mildly scorching guitar solo as a preview of what was to come. There’s a reason the bands play in the order they do, and We Are Scientists was the perfect appetizer for the balls-out rock that was to come.

Art Brut has already been covered here, and honestly the antics of Eddie Argos have to be seen to be truly understood. He’s magnetic and charming enough that he doesn’t even need to play an instrument, and his band is solid enough that they don’t turn themselves into a joke. They’re not performance art, although they certainly walk the line; they’re just having a really good time. The crowd was also having a really good time, and I found myself worried about the structural integrity of the floor–it was giving under the pressure and we came mighty close to getting a painful look at the basement dressing room.

In all, the combination turned into one of the best shows I’ve seen so far this year. Tomorrow I head to the Showbox for another epic pairing: Architecture in Helsinki and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

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Saw Art Brut Last Night

Art Brut and We Are Scientists played together last night at Neumos here in Seattle. Art Brut had 66.6% more band members, so they were 66.6% better.

(It’s damn difficult to write about the bands without comparing them. Because I put a sobering amount of time into avoiding difficulties, I’ll compare them.)

Outstanding, Art Brut was. The singer is more of a speaker, and it’s how they get their lyrics across, and it works live as well as in the studio.

Between addressing the band like a good leader does — asking things like “Art Brut, are we ready for this next one?” — and fielding questions from the audience, and running up to the under-21 balcony through the crowd, Eddie Argos spoke the lyrics as good as we can ask any lyric speaker to speak.

AB cranked out 12 or 14 delicious numbers, and Seattle got as close as Seattle gets to dancing.

But what about the most important questions… like what did they look like? What are the Brits up to? The rhythm guitarist was straight off the ‘72 Swedish Ski Team bus, the drummer was a happy stand up drummer, and the lead guitarist was as brutally good at his instrument as he was at whipping his hair up into a towering, head-enveloping creation that would have made Ratt members proud.

The bassist was smiling, having a great time, and looking pretty damn hot all at once. She looks kinda dumpy in the previous blog entry’s photo, but trust me on my hotness report.

I forgot all about We Are Scientists after the first several AB numbers. Not that WAS wasn’t good; they’re just three men, and they’re a bit thin live. Not the big 3-man sound of the Reverend Horton Heat, not enough to punch you.

Art Brut was just magnetic. Great show. I’ll see them again.

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Seeing We Are Scientists Tomorrow

…at Neumos. WAS are kindly having Art Brut play after them. Maybe WAS needs to get to bed early.

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