The most dangerous concert I've ever been to-- and possibly the best-- was put on by The Narrator in New Haven last November. The band played in the backyard of a Yale co-op, on the second floor of a run-down barn that housed everything from pirate ship blueprints, to snubbed cubist attempts, to what I think might've been a '57 Chevy. The wood and nails that held the barn together had been loosened by repeated ivy league fetes of women, cocaine, and horse racing, to the point that when the 80 people in attendance began jumping around during the band's mid-set performance of "The Electric Slide", the floor collapsed: Skulls and bones started breaking, and we all had this awesome band to thank for our hospital bills and a perfectly unrequited night.
I was supposed to buy The Narrator's seven-inch after the show but couldn't because of the unpleasantness, so it was with death-defying anticipation that I cracked open the Youth City Fire EP, the Chicago quartet's Flameshovel debut. It's uneven, and the vocals range from painfully melodramatic to sadly insecure, but there are bright glimmers of that D.C.-informed punk rock energy that quite literally brought down the house.
The warp-speed crowd-noise montage that kick-starts "Culture/Counts" finally gives way to PiL-dirty guitar slashes and thick drumming that, though not the crispest, rivals pretty much anything on Dischord in terms of sheer energy. There's a similar crash-and-burn aesthetic to "All Are Assassins", which, at under two minutes, manages some potent contrasts and a climactic breakdown/handclap-buildup that flat-out kills in a live setting.
As instrumentalists, The Narrator are tighter than one might expect from a band that's only been around a year and a half; as songwriters, they're burying really slick riffs deep into their mix-- it's the vocals that hold the Youth City Fire EP back. Producer Greg Norman (who's recorded Guided by Voices and 90 Day Men, among others) desperately tries to keep the vocals from being overly exposed, but all too often, it's to no avail-- the energy's there, but the tonality and confidence are not, which is especially dangerous when The Narrator aren't at breakneck speed, such as on the ersatz Sonic Youth noodlander "We Call Police" or the confusing emo waltz "Horse with Blinders".
Those two songs are dangerous slip-ups on an already short EP, which is why the stunning first two minutes of closer "The Electric Slide" are so critical for this young band. This may be the most bad-ass opening of a rock song I've heard so far this year: the call of quiet single-line guitar intervals, snare rim tapping, and a bitter chorus of "Fight! Fight! The Winners! The Winners!" beget increasingly monstrous responses and some fantastic bass work towards the end of movement. It's glorious-- until The Narrator drops the old "can you feel the cancer spread inside me" line, but fine, whatever. Youth City Fire, for all its shortcomings, harbors some seriously potent rock moments. Let's hope the band can manage some self-censorship on future releases without sacrificing the energy that makes them so compelling live.
