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September 15, 2004
'90's Nostalgia
If you went to college during the early 1990's, and if you were a DJ at your college radio station, chances are good that you were a fan of Ride and My Bloody Valentine (especially the noisier stuff.) If you attended a college in some rural or non-Northeastern part of the country, it is also likely that you never got to see either of these bands play live, but you've been following the last 12 years of reports about "reclusive genius" Kevin Shields thinking about maybe entering a recording studio again, or that he drove his car to the grocery store looking bloated and insane, or that he has been spotted laying face-down in the mud of his garden.
Anyway, if you never got to see these bands, you have a second chance at rocking out with a lot of indie kids with post-graduate degrees, thanks to French band M83, who are touring the US for the first time. [their website has a cool low-tech aesthetic, but is difficult to get out of, so be careful] Everybody says this band sounds just like MBV (and I would add Ride), but that's because they do. Especially if you can envision MBV performing with the members of Boards of Canada as guest keyboard-noodlers. Here are the tour dates. This is one super-fast-paced tour: Pitchfork notes that "these noble foreigners can hightail it from Chicago to California to Seattle in the time it takes Kevin Shields to fold a t-shirt." Their show last night at the Bowery Ballroom was high-energy with a lot of big gorgeous soupy '90's guitars. All the crinkly-faced former indie-kids in the crowd grinned and bobbed their heads, thankful that the main act considerately took the stage at a very non-rock-and-roll 10 PM. One of my companions wondered if the Bowery Ballroom bar served hot tea. The band members are touchingly documenting their first tour of the US by taking many photos of the crowd, so if you go to the show, your face might be projected onto the wall of their living room back in the south of France during their post-tour slide show for their parents.
As an added bonus, the delightfully-named Ulrich Schnauss is opening for them on this tour. Ulrich's keyboard and computer-produced music sounds like an early Cocteau Twins backed by the Orbital brothers supplying some big beats. A lot of '90's nostalgia for one night! If you missed the show, and the chance to hit on those foxy indie kids of your youth, all the same people will probably be at the Pixies shows in December. Plus about 50,000 more of them.
