The Horrors
330 Ritch, San Francisco, CA
June 19, 2007

There's an oft-quoted assessment of the merits of current media darlings Arctic Monkeys: "they're good for what they are". In other words, if you accept their chosen milieu, then you have to admit that they purvey it well. These words echoed in my head on Tuesday night as i watched NME-faves the Horrors give their first Bay Area performance at a Tuesday night union of indie clubs Popscene and Shutter. I've gone on record as saying i quite enjoy the Horrors' brand of campy, grungy gothabilly, reminiscent of the Cramps and other more macabre garage acts. However our friend and Popscene NYC kingpin Jeremy saw them perform on the east coast a few months back and described the spectacle as "a lot of noise". So despite my fondness for their debut album Strange House, i waited in the entry line not knowing what to expect from the Horrors. We grabbed a table at the back of the club and whiled away an hour or so waiting for the band, doing some people watching amongst the goth-heavy crowd (an amusing switch from our usual indie kid watching) and listening to the Shutter dj's play a smattering of Joy Division and the Chameleons. We ran into old friend and mod/goth stalwart Sean Cavanaugh, who expressed his admiration for the 60's inspired aspects of the Horrors' sound. Around 11:30pm the band took the stage, with a few passing through the club behind our vantage point at the back, apparently wandering in after a nap on the bus. To my surprise their first song was a cover of Joy Division's "No Love Lost". Unlike LCD Soundsystem's recent live rendition of the track, the Horrors included the spoken word second verse, although it was difficult to understand any of the garbled, distorted words coming out of frontman Faris Badwan's mouth, or to determine whether he was performing the original quote from the House of Dolls or inserting his own rant. Their sound was quite literally a wall of noise, with the bass overdriven to the point that it drowned out most of the other instruments. Again, "good for what they are" ... the Horrors' aesthetic is sloppy, noisy rock, and their lousy sound mixing is a part of that. They played both their cover of the Syndicats' "Crawdaddy Simone" as well as Screaming Lord Sutch's "Jack the Ripper", which i learned was a cover only through Sean. Over the heads of the crowd in front of us i was able to see organist Spider Webb's psychotic posturing, made eerily creepy by his thick black eyeshadow. Badwan lurched around the stage, intermittently climbing along the ceiling out into the crowd. For some reason two piñatas adorned the sides of the stage, giving the band something to destroy throughout the set. Apparently this wasn't enough, as after playing the single "Sheena is a Parasite" Badwan claimed he was blinded by the disco ball in the middle of the club. He then climbed all the way across the ceiling, stepping on the crowd's heads as necessary, to rip the ball off its hanger and return it to the stage, where i believe it was subsequently destroyed. Songs? Yeah, they played those too ... "Gloves", "Count in Fives", "Draw Japan" (one of the few songs where you could actually hear the organ, and not coincidentally one of the most memorable tracks of the night), and "Excellent Choice". As with the album, i wasn't blown away, but it was certainly an entertaining way to spend my birthday evening.

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