Art Brut Vs. Seattle
It took five songs for Eddie Argos & co. to beat the Seattle chill. As they began their set around midnight Saturday, the audience was depressingly reminiscent of the last time we saw Art Brut play, when Argos (possibly probably drunk) began expressing his disgust with the audience's lack of enthusiasm. Aside from a small core of 15 to 20 enthusiastic under-21s (God bless 'em) crowded in front of the stage, the rest of the audience was painfully staid--indie rock kids who couldn't deign to do more than slightly bop their heads, scenesters trying to carry on conversations during the show.
The song that won them over was "Modern Art," a lilting rocker off the band's debut record from 2005. The original is a two verse/two chorus song about Argos' experiences at the Tate Modern and Pompidou, but in an extending coda, Argos stepped off the stage and walked deep into the audience with a new bit about a recent experience in Amsterdam. The subject was the Van Gogh museum, but it might as well have been about the show he was playing right then: for around two minutes, Argos plaintively urged listeners to share in his enthusiasm and excitement, and by the time the band kicked into one last rollicking chorus of the song, the number of arms in the air had tripled or quadrupled. Like that, the chill melted and a sense of abandon and fun filled the club's atmosphere.
Three albums into their career, Art Brut have maintained the sense of urgency but seem a bit more brutish and cynical. The band that once promised to write a song "that makes Israel and Palestine get along" now disgustedly begs "if we can't change the world/ let's at least get the charts right!" They take shots at both indie rock snobbery (tossing a barbed reference to KEXP into "My Little Brother") and over-produced mainstream music (with "Slap Dash for No Cash").
Some people no doubt still think of Art Brut as a shtick, a joke-band built around the fact that the lead singer can't sing, pines away for the girl he lost at 15 ("Emily Kane"), and dreams of being on the now-defunct Top of the Pops. The music is too charmingly earnest and sincere to be real, right? The new album, Art Brut Vs. Satan, goes a long way to putting those fears to rest. Argos is every bit as earnest as he plays it off. As he put it on their first single from 2004, "Formed a Band," "It's not irony/ it's not rock and roll/ we're just talking/ to the kids."
The charm of Art Brut is that the songs develop along with the band. Gone is the bit from "Emily Kane" where Argos counts down to the second the time that's elapsed since they broke up. He re-connected with her (yes, she's real) soon after the song was released, and she's seeing someone, he's seeing someone, so he can't really go on telling the same pining song night after night. That'd be dishonest. Art Brut keeps the song fresh as a paean to the power of rock music: he met her again because of the tune, and yes, he still wants kids on school buses singing her name. The fact that some do is a testament to what music can achieve, if only artists bother to take it seriously.
Which is why Argos is so earnest about music. He likes some music, he hates other music, and Art Brut fits only uncomfortably on the spectrum between indie and mainstream. Pretension what this band is against. All they want is a place for a band that plays hooky rock music and a lead singer who can't sing but still has something to say, and to hell with all the rest.
For an opener, Seattle got its first glimpse (complete with matching satin jackets) of Miike Snow. If you don't know the name, trust us, you know the music. Swedish producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg used to go by the moniker "Bloodshy & Avant" and did some amazing work for major pop musicians, including the schizoidal riff for Britney Spears' "Toxic" (which they co-wrote), the only good song she ever did. They've teamed up with Andrew Wyatt (an in-house producer at Downtown Records and a former bandmate of The Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin) to form Miike Snow. Their self-titled debut just dropped on June 9, but early songs like "Animal" were already generating lots of excitement. It's subtle, interesting dance music-cum-rock, and definitely worth checking out the next time they're in town.
