She Wants Revenge… and she also apparently listens to lots of gloomy post-punk! Photo from .
Los Angeles band defies placement in any one genre. That could, however, simply be due to the fact that they imitate so many others so well and have yet to really define their own. The band’s show at the last Sunday night turned out to be a perfect place to show off their emulative prowess, featuring a playlist of songs heavily influenced as much by old school bands like Joy Division, Bauhaus, the Cure and Soft Cell as Interpol and Nine Inch Nails, and with more than a bit of Rick James’ funk.
The band members, and frontman Justin Warfield in particular, have repeatedly referred to their music as dance music. While that moniker certainly works, the band’s stage personality is far from the dance/techno norm of stacked synthesizers drenched in fog, hovered over by shadowy, headphone-clad figures. On the contrary, this group is constantly moving, often out-dancing the audience as they perform.
A duo on record, and essentially living-room-recorded, the band features four players on tour, which helped fill out their sound significantly. The core pair of guitarist/vocalist Warfield and bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Adam “12” Bravin were joined by guitarist Thomas Froggart and drummer Scott Ellis as they played about 80 minutes in front of a close-to-capacity house. And that audience spent the entire time moving, bouncing, popping and anything else to the industrial disco dance sounds blasting them from the stage.
Anything but moshing, that is. A pit may have been imminent at one point early in the show, but Warfield was quick to lean into the crowd and warn the only potential slammer that “Not everyone wants to bump into you!” (Warfield later pointed the same audience member out to express gratitude for understanding).
They tore through songs dripping in danceability like “Animal Attraction,” “Your Love” and “Out of Control.” led by Warfield’s incongruous vocals that recalled Cakes John McCrea (only coming out of the mouth of Lenny Kravitz) while Bravin alternately pounded on the bass strings or keyboards. One impressive highlight was a near-industrial version of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” sung in a howling monotone that nearly topped the deadpan of Richard Butler’s original, smoke-damaged vocals.
As they finished their set — the last one of this tour — Warfield and Bravin thanked the audience and their opening bands before launching into an even more explosive “Tear You Apart” than the released version. The audience took over singing the choruses and then screamed approval as the band finally cleared the stage.
Opening band gave an impressive performance from the same genres: fast, hard and drenched in emo. Their sound showed heavy influence from Echo and the Bunnymen and Love and Rockets, and at one point sounded like the Cure with an eighteen-year-old Paul Westerberg covering vocals for Robert Smith.
Not sure if you can get much more post-punk and pre-emo than that.
Follow Reverb on Twitter! !
Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
