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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
The Rapture
The Starlight Desperation
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In The Venue
Salt Lake City, UT
4/24/2004
By: Matthew Nanes
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It's quite interesting to witness Retro-Rock's unwarranted mainstream success. Out of the gate you had the ridiculous hype of The Strokes, the from-left-field success of The White Stripes and the recent breakthrough of the rip-off-licious Jet (whose only redeeming quality is the ability to mimic seemingly every Rock band to come out of the '70s). Other than that, it seems like major labels are dying to throw any retro band to the wall and see how it sticks. The Rapture and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are two of these bands and have teamed up for a quite unlikely tour.
First off, there was The Starlight Desperation. This band has a clear case of possessing an egomaniac frontman who really isn't as good as he thinks he is. Pouting his lips like Mike Myers impersonating Mick Jagger and playing (if you can call it that) his guitar, he easily turned this reviewer against his band. Dude, drop the attitude right now. The Starlight Desperation's other band members were actually quite competent and played sans bad attitude (for the most part), except for when the singer did something to piss off the drummer. Looks like I'm not the only one he's pissing off. Musically, they were like Jet in the sense they genre-hopped their way around the Retro Rock map, playing songs that sounded identical to AC/DC, Motorhead and The New York Dolls. Don't expect them riding the hype-wave anytime soon.
Up next, surprisingly, was The Rapture, as they were being advertised as the headliners, and more people came out for them. They opened their set with a new song, setting their audience into a dancing frenzy with their brand of disco-punk. It was clear how much internal chemistry the band has, as well as a complete lack of pretension. Multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Andruzzi played a mean cowbell and danced like a man possessed while vocalists Luke Jenner and Matt Safer would share a microphone (on more than one occasion) to harmonize with each other, smiles abounding. The great thing about seeing this band live is that you hear the music as it's supposed to be, like at a dance club, as opposed to the robbed sound their records possess in the course of a casual listen. Songs like "Heaven" and "House of Jealous Lovers" had the thump and intensity the recordings lacked and allowed the song's disco rhythms to be pounded into the audience's brains. The result was a movin' dance floor. Jenner also had the crowd in the palm of his hands. He would hop into the crowd and dance with them and even let the crowd sing on the ballad "Open Up Your Heart." If any of the Retro-Rock scene bands should be the next make it big, it should be this one.
As some of the crowd cleared after The Rapture, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club took the stage to less fanfare and unfortunately, more pretension - rarely playing off the audience, let alone acknowledging them. Taking their cues from late '80s-early '90s UK bands like Jesus and Mary Chain and The Stone Roses, they began the set awash in fuzz distortion (on both guitar AND bass) and derivative plodding tempos. They would suffer from muddy sound and monotony all night. The only bright moment of their set is when they sped up the tempo for "Whatever Happened To My Rock And Roll?," their "breakout" single.
This left me to ask the same question as the BRMC just did, in regard to the show. The Rapture pumped out their music without pretension and made their retro, disco-punk sound fresh, and more importantly, fun and accessible for the masses. But The Starlight Desperation and BRMC were simply caught up in their own hype (or lack thereof when it comes to the former). Overall, The Rapture easily stole the show and will make headway in the mainstream if they keep playing shows like this.
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