Amy's Robot

Röyksopp and Annie

I went to Webster Hall last night to see Röyksopp and Annie on what I wish they were calling their Monsters of Norwegian Rock tour. Annie makes some catchy synthed-out little pop numbers, and the admiration she's attracted from even the most po-faced critics (like Pitchfork, who ranked "Heartbeat" the best single of 2004) seems to have built her a nice little fanbase of hip young things over here. A straight-laced guy in my office in his mid-30's was walking around singing "Heartbeat" the other day, for crying out loud. I personally prefer "Chewing Gum", her collaboration with Richard X (see video here.)

Anyway, Annie performs live with two Finnish guys, one on guitar and one very enthusiastic porcine-looking guy with a mini-pompadour going bonkers on his keyboards and other beats-and-synths machines. Annie herself is very sweet, but doesn't seem to have worked out what to do on stage yet besides stand there and sing and occasionally point at the audience--I was hoping for a more energetic performance of such mind-arrestingly catchy songs.

The two guys in Röyksopp put in a lot more effort--they were both gotten up like Ralf and Florian from the Man Machine album, had a gigantic inflatable cassette tape with RöYKSOPP written on it in marker filling the stage behind them, and they both grooved vigorously but stiffly, in true Scandinavian style, to their music.

Pitchfork described their first album Melody A.M. as "house for people who don't actually like house," but also as the work of master pop craftsmen. I think it's like the best possible culmination of a thousand downtempo electronic compilation CDs. The new album, The Understanding, is probably better--the beats are a little harder and you can actually dance to most of it.

Live, these guys were just awesome. They didn't say much other than various combinations of "Thank you!" and "New York!" and "Good evening!", but they really got into the music, which has beautiful lush melodies and slamming basslines, they did live drumming (on electronic drums) and sang through a vocodor, and gave as energetic and rocking a show as one could expect from two men with super-slicked hair named Svein and Torbjorn who were dressed up like Kraftwerk.

categories: Music, Robot-on-the-Spot
posted by amy at 1:01 PM | #