I feel weird reviewing this CD because I grew up near these guys in St. Louis and was kind of beguiled by them. The Berlin brothers lived in the manse on the hill above a huge apartment complex for divorcees. Some of the frustrated single-parent-household kids would beat up Eve, Bosh, and Lillian for delivering newspapers while wearing tight pants and makeup and for working as parking lot attendants while being lean and groovy and speaking in elliptical rants that referenced Voltaire and Iggy Pop. One Halloween, they went trick-or-treating dressed as T. Rex and got pummeled by some kids dressed as AC/DC. I remember hearing that Bosh and Eve wanted to go back for revenge, but Lillian told them that absorption was a better tactic: "We'll just sop that whole proletariat choad-rock thing into our androgynous interplanetary millionaire shtick."
Okay, I made that up, but I had to, because the Living Things CD was playing, and not enough was going on with that to keep me entertained. Their energy, ambition, and audible influences, should have congealed for a knockout-- imagine the Reid brothers and Wayne Kramer uniting to form JAMC5, but hoping for radio play in the 90s. Steve Albini's recordings balance the crunch and the polish. The political lyrics are even grounded in theology (a la Dylan) to keep them from fading with the headlines. But this band that tries to be everything ends up seeming like a cipher.
Maybe the Living Things' combination of sincere poses is coming too soon after the ripple of ironic hard-rock bands? Opener "Bombs Below" employs a vintage choral fist-pumpy chant that Electric Six used semi-satirically on both of their albums, right before solos done in similar guitar tones. Maybe people are momentarily finding the glitz-retro clones not much different than Elvis impersonators or Civil War re-enactors? Dopey simulacra abound; every bar scene contains a group of pretty enough dudes who are to Mott the Hoople what a McDonalds Playland is to Walt Disney World. Maybe the Los Angeles circuit inspires bands to perform with a hyperdramatic larger-than-lifeness that's hard to swallow? I just saw She Wants Revenge prance and leer and sway beyond the honey-mustard quotidian fringe in which most of us earn our rent, and I was praying for a life-size savior, even if life looked like, well, A.C. Newman.
I really want to cheer their political anthems, but currently, "glam" and "international conflict" bring up Gary Glitter's indiscretions with Vietnamese tweens on my brain's Google Image search. Besides, party riffs have already been paired with anti-establishment gospel manifestoes by the Make Up, and war-on-terror already got the seventies-rawk treatment by Bobby Conn. Neither of those bravura acts won the chance to perform on all the late shows. Nor did they get a Cingular commercial for a two year-old album that, bless its heart, went through three major labels and two releases. (Ahead of the Lions is masterfully sequenced; the one-trick party moves along more smoothly than the nine of these songs did on 2004's Black Skies in Broad Daylight.)
I kept thinking that these guys would blow up late like the Counting Crows did, giving this review a semi-relevant sheen, but I have a feeling that record store clerks somewhere are building girlfriends out of Living Things promos, the way I used to with a stack of August & Everything Afters before the sudden popularity of "Mr. Jones" ended the dream. Fans of handclaps, who don't mind that Berlin sings as many lines about doing lines as he does protest lines, marching lines and battle lines, will have fun pretending to be epic along with these Velvet Ramones.
