Argh. Just checked Stereolab's site and saw they're playing in San Francisco tonight, where I am quite decidedly not right now. Yeah well, I can't complain too much. Last week Cec and I caught Einstürzende Neubauten and Chicks on Speed on two consecutive days. Both shows were great in different ways.
Einstürzende Neubauten's show was strange and inspirational, the way they are. The stage looked like the set of a 1980s post-apocalyptic movie, and the band created an sometimes grinding, sometimes hopelessly beautiful soundscape from the wreckage, while Blixa took the center and held the crowd in thrall with his stage presence, like something out of a 1920's Berlin cabaret.
Chicks on Speed was all energy, the three of them doing that great talking-over-each-other thing against the filter of feedback from their machines. It was so much fun. Two songs in they created some on-stage art punk agitprop, unrolling a two-meter square photo of Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Prime Minister of Denmark), and explaining that the night of the show was the one year anniversary of Denmark's committing troops to the American invasion of Iraq. Then all three of them started screaming "Liar!!! Liar!!! Liar!!!" as one of their comrades wrote in glowing pink paint across the smiling face of the Prime Minister the word LIAR.
Sigh... It's been a long time since I've seen PoMo agitprop done live. Great show. I just loved all the feedback
The happy surprise of the evening was Chicks on Speed's opening act, a girl called Sophie Rimheden, (from Göteborg, apparently) who created some artistic feedback of her own, tearing apart old 80s classics, and putting them back together over a looping haze of electronic glitch pop, as she sang vocals over the top with a high, clear voice. I bought her CD after the show. It's really beautiful stuff.
Posted by case at March 29, 2004 10:19 PM