Les Savy Fav, Straight Arrows@ Billboard, Melbourne(08/02/2011)

Thu 10th Feb, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Les Savy Fav have given birth to a million memorable experiences in their 16-year career. It’s a thing of legend, that their show will be like no other you have ever seen: unpredictable, chaotic and a good deal thanks to that flabby psycho frontman Tim Harrington. With that comes a wallop of expectation. But just maybe, that expectation is deserved because – maybe – Les Savy Fav have never played a disappointing gig in their career.

Things were more or less deserted when Straight Arrows took to the stage, barring the presence of Mr. Harrington standing square in the middle and right up the front. If this was disconcerting at all for the Sydney group, they didn’t show it, offering up their garage slaughter with pace and energy. Volumes were bruisingly loud but that wonderfully served to enhance their raw impact. A whole floor of bass and guitars almost drowning out the drums, yet rarely is that such a great thing. Convincingly loud and endearingly weird, they made a great way to start the show, something Harrington’s bobbing bald crown attested to.

Crowd invasions. Slobbery kisses. Quick dips in the Maribyrnong. There had been stories, and with them possibilities, but the only thing known to be expected was the unknown. It’s what makes Les Savy Fav most special, and in the repetitive, staid mess of modern live music, it’s something wonderful.

Harrington and drummer Harrison Haynes came on with a chair and a towel and a knife. Haynes began lopping off pieces of the former’s beautiful mane. Harrington then took to the crowd, a girl in the front being the first gasping victim. Several others fell to the knife, soon to see bunches of their hair strewn about the stage and later thrust down his pants. Some of that hair was mine. I hope it’s happy where it now hangs.

All of this was even before the first song began, and when it did, a spirit of a great time had already been conjured by that weird ritual. Amongst all the other ridiculous things that happened- the gradual transformation of jeans into toga into vest; the masks and gloves and gaffa tape worn; the pole-humping; the DIY slip’n’slide onstage; the grasping my girlfriend – for many, the setlist was a sidenote. But for some, hearing classics like The Sweat Descends & Who Rocks the Party was just as ecstatic and important.

At the end of the gig, it was mainly about Mr. Harrington. In his best moments, his presence was bordering on the messianic. There was awe and adoration, but most essentially, sparkling grins on each person that he found room to hug or kiss or molest. While that wild energy fires, always visible was a considered intelligence that wanted a good time for every person there. Despite looking at times like the night wasn’t all his, like his million gigs were wearing on him, he nonetheless more than held his own in a dance-off with several girls on a giant white box that he’d pushed from somewhere into the centre of the crowd. Through it all, with eyes always on the lookout for something to play with, some way to work that particular venue, there was an intelligence in performance that blends equally with chaos and recklessness. An intelligence that refuses to disappoint, which must be his real genius.

If it wasn’t his night he still delivered fantastically and – touchingly! – he was there, human again, when it was all over. By the door on Russell Street, waving everyone goodbye, heartfelt hugs and photos and thankyous to people who’d witnessed one of the great live bands of our time.