Fucking in the Streets

I think I’m in love. And right when I least expected it, too. I
stupidly slept on your two 2008 albums (Hold On Now,
Youngster… and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed!), left
them sitting on my desk for months. What can I say? Sometimes you’re
just not in the right place for an album to really hit you. But a few
weeks ago, I gave them both another spin in preparation for writing a
little blurb about your show last week at Neumos, and I have become
unreasonably, overwhelmingly smitten. I’ve listened to almost
nothing else ever since.

I love your faux-shambolic, incredibly kinetic, catchy,
bursting-at-the-seams sound, full of keyboard and glockenspiel hooks,
violin shredding, wild rhythmic turns, and noisy/messy guitars that are
actually measured and spot-on. But the lyrics—and the
singing—are what really kill me: the cutesy reference points
(K Records! Stationery! Literature! LiveJournal!); the
wonderfully melodramatic moods; the free-associative, nonsensically
tumultuous word games; the alternating
boy-girl-sung-solo/screamed-by-the-whole-gang delivery. It’s all
spiteful, romantic doom and gloom broken by these moments of
maybe happiness and new love and getting lost in music, and I love all
of it so very much. I’m breathless.

And you were pretty much perfect last Friday night at Neumos, just
as cute and nerdy and energetic onstage as you sound on record, totally
fulfilling and surpassing my every giddy expectation, screaming and
jumping into the crowd and basically just exploding all over the
stage without ever missing a beat. I pogo’d, I shouted along to the
shouty parts (“Shut up!” “HAHAHA!” “Shout at the world…” etc.), I
danced, I sweated out more beer than I have at a show for a long
time. I felt like a dumb, romantic kid again.

You mentioned how much you guys like Seattle. You recorded
your last album here with John Goodmanson (with whom you’re presently
recording your new one, breaking just for this tour); you apparently
have lots of friends here, like Poster of the Week favorite Carlos
Ruiz, who designed your T-shirts, as well as ex-Seattleite Zac
Pennington, whose Parenthetical Girls you’ve toured with; you mentioned
having eaten at vegan restaurant Bamboo Garden and having gone to the
Funhouse the night before to see everyone’s favorite band Wavves (your
guitarist was sporting their Wipers-logo-swiping T-shirt). You
introduced the excellent song “Miserabilia” by saying that, since you
were all so fond of Seattle, you would play us a song about how “each
and every one of us is going to die alone,” which I thought was sweet.
(“Miserablia” was when the disco ball lit up and started
spinning.) Well, let me unofficially say: Seattle likes you, too. So
how about you just move here once the new album’s done so you
can play Neumos like every month? Cardiff, Wales, is so, so far away,
and you know how these long-distance relationships can go. Anyways,
just think about it.

Yours,

Eric