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The French Kicks are a band we listened to several years ago, when we consumed with authority anything that remotely reminded us of Tortoise, but we entered Neumo's Tuesday night predisposed to absolutely hate them and anyone who was at the show. Pitchfork has turned on The French Kicks bigtime, and since we're kind of a follower we swallowed every word of it.
We missed the first band, and the second opener seemed like it was a subset of the first; just a drummer and a guy in front of a few keyboards. It was obnoxiously charming and short, thankfully. Very similar to seeing a twenty-minute alt-rock set by Zach Morris.
A couple of French Kicks releases have gone by without the grace of Seattlest's attention, but the word we got was that a presence has been gradually invading their disks that is not welcome there. Melody. Really? Melody? Fuck. They took the stage and tight beats and droning occurred, though, and kept occurring compliments of drummer Aaron Thurston and guitarist Josh Wise, whose staccato styles carry the band. Every once in a while something would pop up that could be labled melodious, but there was none of the syrupy crap we were expecting. Or, there turned out to be a lot of melody, actually, and there was a lot of syrupy crap (as there always has been with the French Kicks, despite our rosy recollections), but it just wasn't that offensive as far as syrupy crap goes. Maybe we're getting soft in our old age, but there was enough power and confusion in their set that they kept themselves on the right side of the wall between what's decent and what's Tullycraft.
We just listened around their Myspace looking for something we could point to and say, "See, it's pretty good," but unfortunately it isn't. We can't get down with any of the tracks we've heard from their 2006 release Two Thousand. "So Far We Are" seems like something we remember from the show, but we remember it being better than that. Maybe we should drink a few vodka tonics and listen again. Maybe it's just better live. Maybe it says something uncomfortable about a reviewer who knows that the best stuff is about to happen when someone on stage says "this is an old one, but..." every. single. time. Front dude Nick Stumpf is a little too Liverpool to really fit in this band if they were our putty to mold, but they make it work and it's a good show. Definitely worth the mid-week outing, but we can't recommend the current album.
The best thing about the show Tuesday night was that we saw a guy who opened for The Sword a month ago backing the bar and we'd forgotten the name of his band (Akimbo). Yeah, we could have looked it up, but we forgot. Seeing his face, even if it wasn't screaming at us this time, brought it back. They rocked and it looks like they have some shows coming up in September that we'll try to remind you of. The French Kicks they aren't.
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you're definitely going soft in the head if you're badmouthing tullycraft.
What can I say? My head is mush and they're just not my thing.
Just something of note - I realize that you view Pitchfork as your "Bible" but perhaps a little fact checking would have been smart. The lead singer is Nick Stumpf, the drummer is Aaron Thurston, and Matt Stinchcomb left the band earlier this year.
fixed.
The problem is this damn bio which is everywhere.
One of these days, I'm convinced Pitchfork is going to say that eating shit is the new paradigm in edgy artfullness, or whatever fancy words they use. What I mean to say is, the French Kicks are a solid live band.