By Daniel Rutledge
:: Les Savy Fav, Holy F**k
:: The Kings Arms Tavern, Auckland
:: February 1, 2011
Les Savy Fav are a band you really should see live, with one of the most hilarious, crazy and downright entertaining live shows on the planet.
But I want to start this review with a disclaimer. Basically, I don’t know much about the band that I am reviewing.
Generally I only review gigs of bands that I dig so I can go over what they played and didn’t play and basically give a fan’s perspective. But I had never even heard of Les Savy Fav until about midday yesterday.
So I’m sorry to those of you who are real fans, especially if you didn’t get to go when I did. I know this isn’t fair. But the gig was so good I feel compelled to review it, as a new convert rather than an old fan.
So with that out of the way I have to say it was the most fun small venue live gig I’ve been to in a long time. The Les Savy Fav live show is really something special, thanks mainly to the amazing frontman, Tim Harrington.
More on that in a minute.
First, me and a couple of mates arrived to the brilliant support act that was Holy F**k, who also performed at yesterday’s Laneway Festival. These jokers are one of the many acts I hear my friends talking about quite a lot and hear on bFM a bit but have never really gotten into myself.
Live they were fantastic. Comprised of a bass player, a drummer and two blokes on synthesizers, their music was instantly hypnotic.
As we walked into the Kings Arms we were disappointed to realise we had missed a couple of their songs as they started earlier than scheduled. But walking through the doors we stopped this conversation mid-sentence and were immediately captivated by the sounds they were delivering – upbeat, trippy synth-pop.
During the final song one of the synthesizer players seemed to be pulling a long film strip out of one of the contraptions he was producing noise with. Bit weird. Looked cool.
Tim Harrington was standing at the front of the crowd for Holy F**k, really getting into it. He looked like the sort of guy who normally when you see him in a crowd, you kind of take note of where he is standing, because he looks like he could be dangerous. He’s just an enormous, slightly mad looking dude:
About one minute before we arrived at the gig, my mate Tony, who is a big Les Savy Fav fan and had actually gotten me the ticket, warned: “The singer is a bit of a mentalist who like jumps into the crowd and kisses people and stuff.”
Great, I thought. Real rock n roll.
But I was unprepared.
Harrington did indeed jump into the crowd and do all sorts of stuff with (or rather to) the audience. It was during the first song that this guy in the crowd, probably about 20 with a sort of long bowl cut and glasses, was the rather unwilling recipient of a big sloppy kiss. That was only the start.
Harrington is like a kid with the most severe case of ADD you’ve ever seen. He’s like a really fun, non-sinister G G Allin. He’s like a big fun bag of fireworks going off in the room.
When he walked on stage, he had a black plastic bag over his face which he was sucking in and out of his mouth. He ripped a hole in it just before manically blurting out his first line.
After a few lines he tore the bag from his face and immediately got into his unique brand of crowd interaction, starting with leaning right down and singing with his face just inches from those of the people in the front row. He also got audience members to sing lines from his songs almost straight away and continued this for the whole performance.
His mic had a really long lead which allowed him to move about the entire venue. Later in the set he even ventured outside the front door and into the car park. There he continued to sing while lying face-up on the ground, until he was at the bottom of a massive body-pile of fans – something he initiated.
At another point he made his way through the crowd and then climbed up onto a high shelf, pushing empty bottles and glasses out of the way. While singing up there he picked up a potplant and first sang to it, then simulated sex with it. He then jumped back into the crowd and continued moving through it, singing personally to a random punter every now and then.
Actually being there, there was a certain sense of electrifying danger in the air. It’s not that I thought anything bad was going to happen or anyone was going to be hurt, but there was a sort of extreme recklessness to the whole thing that was just so exciting to be a part of.
Harrington at one point was in the crowd singing face-to-face with a male fan who knew the words to his song and was singing a lot of the lines. He then took the bloke into the toilets, closed the door behind them and emerged a minute or so later covered in toilet paper, singing the whole time.
At another point he went all the way to the very back of the bar, found a gentleman sitting there, and serenaded him with his head up underneath the man’s t-shirt. He then removed the t-shirt and put it on himself.
He pashed a few other people, both men and women, and had his pants pulled off by a rabid fan at another point. But weirdly there wasn’t really a sexual tone to it at all.
I could go on and on about Harrington’s crazy antics – I sort of have already, I guess – it was just a non-stop barrage of craziness.
As for the music, it was great indie rock with strong punk influences. I can’t tell you much about the tracklist except for the encore which was ‘The Sweat Descends’. Check that link for a look at how Harrington acts with a crowd too.
This track got the strongest crowd response of the night in terms of the most fierce slam dancing. Although I have to say the whole night was generally very energetic, which is pretty amazing because it was a Tuesday night and most of the audience had been at the Laneway Festival the day before. And on top of that, Harrington was such a spectacle that it was easy to find yourself either standing still and staring open-mouthed, or doubled over with laughter.
In between songs, Harrington’s less physical humour would shine through with the stuff he said. The only example I can think of is something like this: “Hey New Zealand! Put another shrimp on the barbie! You guys have all the kangaroos, right? The floods were bad here weren’t they?” But those printed words say nothing of the delivery, which really made it hilarious.
Honestly the guy is part musician, part performance artist and part comedian. I really can’t wait until I get to see him perform again.
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