It’s at the point when Tim Harrington is suspended upside down from a balcony by his legs, with only a few fans keeping his head and a ten foot drop becoming friends, that you realise Les Savy Fav are not like most bands. Everyone who comes to New York’s wildest knows this though, it’s what makes seeing Les Savy Fav so alluring. In the course of tonight’s show, Harrington goes on to surf through the crowd on a bench, dress as assorted members of The Village People and give sweaty bear hugs to those who want them and some who don’t.
If Harrington is a force of nature then his band are the sturdy foundations who stay strong when he gets wild. Les Savy Fav have reached a point now that just the opening chords of a song like ‘Raging In The Plague Age’ send the audience wild. Elsewhere, the scatter-gun barking of ‘Appetites’ whets the proverbial early on but it is material from the bands 2007 album ‘Let’s Stay Friends’ that really gets the party started. ‘The Equestrian’ sees Harrington climb from the aforementioned bench up to the soon to be hung from balcony, never missing a beat as he barks the words directly into the faces of those gathered around him. As he makes his way back onto the stage, that fourth wall of reality restored, the party tones of ‘Patty Lee’ kick out and Les Savy Fav go from snarling to shimmying in one fell swoop.
The band can however be hoisted by their own petard. Half way through this evening’s set they throw out what must be thousands of neon glo-sticks into the crowd. Flashbacks to 2007 aside, what follows is that the sticks are then thrown back at the band for a good twenty minutes, at one point drummer Harrison Haynes has to remove his cymbal to protect his face from an onslaught of nu-rave memories. It feels curmudgeonly to criticise a band for doing something different but Les Savy Fav’s songs are so good that sometimes it would be nice for them to play it straight and dial down the wackiness a little.
A delve into their back catalogue does the trick however with Harrington and co slamming the crowd with both ‘Who Rocks The Party’ and ‘The Sweat Descends’. Never before have two song titles so perfectly told the story of this unmissable live band. We just pity whoever has to clean up after them.
Words by David Renshaw
Photo by Sakura – http://rockphotographer.net
