Run Run Run
w/Division of Laura Lee, the Catheters
Sat May 8, Studio Seven, 8 pm, $12 (all ages).
All things equal--decent venue ambiance, moderate cover charge, hipsteriffic clientele--which would you rather see: a really good Ride cover band or a group that sounds like a really good Ride cover band but actually writes its own songs using that familiar formula? It's a tough call, with those seeking recognizable riffs and cathartic chorus sing-alongs choosing the rote renditions, and the adventurous but not too adventurous broadening their horizons by an infinitesimal amount.
In the shoegazer realm, actual note-for-note mimicry is rare, so the choice becomes listening to the original records at home or seeing unofficial, "influenced-by" groups such as Run Run Run, which, in true bastard-child fashion, plucked a title from a Velvet Underground tune as its moniker.
Run Run Run creates a heavy haze with its rhythm section before its sweltering-sunbeam hooks cut swaths through the fog. On the title track to its EP Drizzle, both singer Xander Smith and the bass line sound heavily drugged until an alarm-clock guitar tone initiates a rude awakening. The group's riffs ring loudest immediately after the hooks, like celebratory gunfire after a festive event.
In many ways, it's a stellar release, catchy but never cloying, subtle without lapsing into sleep-inducing spells. The song "2 a.m.," a dizzy, slow-paced stumble, provides a soundtrack for staggering home at the titular time and lying on the floor, watching ceiling cracks display amazing elasticity through alcohol-addled eyes.
Yet in some ways, this album feels somewhat superfluous, like an afterthought time-capsule stowaway. Drizzle sounds about how you would expect from a group that opened for the Psychedelic Furs, appears on The Osbournes: The First Season DVD, and features a singer named Xander. Retro-tethered and superficial, Run Run Run embraces a coldly calculated dreamscapes-and-dissonance dynamic balance. Its ambient and abrasive elements don't clash like riveting rivals; instead, the noise bursts feel like the most sloppily applied cosmetic touch since Robert Smith's lipstick.
Run Run Run features Phil Cunningham, former guitarist for New Order, a band not exactly known for its rockin' ax showcases. And it employs a French horn player, which at least differentiates it from the dozens of other acts who have taken the My Bloody Valentine template out for a spin. It formed in 2001 but waited three years to produce a five-song EP, which suggests either obsession with compositional craftwork or profound procrastination.
Xander Smith previously fronted Other Star People, another backward-thinking outfit, albeit one more interested in upbeat Cars-style synthesized fluff than moody meanderings.
RX3, in the group's own website shorthand, puts on a glamorous show. Strobe lights pulse, guitars wind themselves into knots that snap with tension, and Daniel Dod's drums detonate during each anthemic outburst. To quote U2, with whom several members of the band are apparently obsessed based on interview-mention mania, seeing Run Run Run can be even better than the real thing. Many shoegazer bands sucked live; hence the genre's name. Instead of surly sole-searchers or reunited geezers, fans get an energetic act in its prime, so full of action that its name is a verb in triplicate.
In interviews, Smith has said that Run Run Run's name, in addition to name-checking a Lou Reed-penned tune about Beardless Harry and Seasick Sarah, recalls "the feeling you get as a kid, running across a field for no reason... you lose that feeling of innocence when you grow up."
Similarly, listening to Run Run Run conjures images of early experiences with groups such as Ride and My Bloody Valentine. But those days, and those bands, are gone, and lovelorn listeners can either nurture nostalgia by spinning those same discs into oblivion or look for existing acts that can fill the shoegazer void for a night with a competent concert. To pilfer a phrase from the song for which it was christened, Run Run Run is good enough to get yourself to heaven.
