Okay, I’ll admit it. As much as I like my bearded bards of folk music and hipster heroes of indie rock, my heart will always more or less belong to the lo-fi garage rock scene. I live for the fuzzed-out noise, the relentless guitars, the almost impossible to understand vocals. If I could do nothing but go to crowded warehouse shows of this variety for the rest of my life, I would probably be the happiest person on the planet. Give me your unbearably tight black jeans, your whiskey drinkers, your crappy black hair dye.
Basically, give me shows like the one Chicago band Disappears played on June 17th at Kung Fu Necktie, my venue drug of choice, with Austin trio Woven Bones and Philadelphia locals Far-Out Fangtooth. I wasn’t even planning to write this review, but I feel like it would be a public disservice not to after how incredible the night turned out to be. Turnout was modest, thanks to a Pissed Jeans concert around the corner and Game 7 of whatever everyone’s pretending to care about this week, but that didn’t seem to matter to the bands at all. Every. Single. One. KILLED. IT. See the excessive punctuation? See the capital letters? Yeah. That good. It’s really quite difficult to communicate just how much so without the frantic gestures I’m currently making at my computer. Use your imagination.
Far-Out Fangtooth is one of those bands that does garage with a hint of rockabilly, something that you might not initially notice by listening to their recordings on MySpace. Even the way the four of them were dressed highlighted their distinctive sound. One guitarist sported jet-black hair, a ripped jean jacket, tight jeans, black boots. The other wore a simple white shirt-blue jean combo and had the look of pre-fame Kings of Leon. Their female bassist was tiny and punkish, but also quite sweet, and spent most of the set sitting quietly off to the side. On drums was perhaps the most interestingly dressed guy of the bunch, wearing a shaman-poncho looking thing with complete normalcy. For their first show at KFN, Fangtooth were loud, confident, and unabashedly proud of what they were doing. Everyone noticed, too. Fun fact – they stuck around after the show for weekly resident DJ gig Night Train to spin a set, which they started out with Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” Yep. 