The Bravery and Ash
Slim's, San Francisco, CA
March 29, 2005

I hopped on Caltrain with my iPod blazing and headed up to meet V and Gary in the city for that night's show, britpop survivors and Irish power trio-turned-four piece Ash opening for the latest music press-dubbed BEST BAND IN THE FREAKIN' UNIVERSE, New York neo-glam cum dance punk outfit the Bravery. We found a reasonable spot to stand in the Slim's throng and awaited Ash's arrival. It must be said, i was not the biggest fan of Tim Wheeler and co. back in the day, and certainly haven't paid attention to them for a long time. I remember seeing them play a Sunday afternoon show at Bottom of the Hill around 1995 and thinking they were awful. Sure, they wrote catchy songs ... who doesn't like "Kung Fu" or "Girl from Mars"? The problem was that on the record there were 2 or 3 guitar parts, and live it was just Tim. And to put it bluntly, he's no Paul Weller. Two or three albums ago the band apparently recognized this problem, and enlisted a girl named Charlotte as a second guitarist. Their set began with a few lively new numbers, then hit upon the aforementioned earlier favorites. And as it went on, i realized "wait, Charlotte's the lead guitarist, Tim's doing backup!" And then the thought began to creep into my head that Tim was playing next to nothing. As if in response to my wonderings, Tim's amp blew out on "Kung Fu" and he stopped playing entirely, and there was my proof ... yes, it's all Charlotte. Despite my characteristic musings, Ash were actually pretty good. I was impressed enough by their more recent material to check out their latest album Meltdown.

Now we come to indie radio's latest darlings, the Bravery. Their catchy song "Honest Mistake" is now in heavy rotation on Live 105. After what seemed an unending span while their roadies set the stage, the band came out and launched into "Unconditional" from their debut album No Brakes. Oh, where to begin? The singer looked like the Irish gangster villain from Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle ... leather jacket, belt chains and boots, and jet black hair pushed forward into a point, almost in the devil's locks style of Misfits-era Glen Danzig. The guitarist's head could've been that of David Bowie circa 1974, and it was placed on a torso sporting a John Lennon-esque New York City t-shirt. The bass player looked like Curt Smith of Tears for Fears with streaky eyeliner like Visage. The keyboardist, two words: World Party. The drummer, well we'll leave him alone. Suffice it to say that there was a parade of cliché going on here, and to back it up we had barrels upon barrels of ego. The music? Totally uninspiring. The singer can't sing, the guitarist plays riffs lifted from countless other, better bands, and the keyboardist adds in the dance punk synth lines du jour. By the end of the set i wanted to climb on stage and brain the preening, posing, "i'm so cool i'm pissed at everything" bass player. I probably would have had i been in the front and been doused by his beer during one of his pseudo-rock'n'roll moments. When they ended their set i was past ready to leave, but we stayed for their one song encore (separated from the main set by a scant thirty seconds, ostensibly so they could return to continued crowd support and pretend they'd been cheering for them for 10 minutes). V asked Gary how this horrible performance should end, to which he responded "they could play a bad cover song". And lo, the keyboardist began playing the opening synth of INXS's "Don't Change". Good night.

Maybe i'm being overly harsh. But when a band likes to compare themselves to Fugazi, they'd better not suck this bad.

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