The cliché that Washington’s concert audiences are stiff, humorless mannequins even while watching their favorite bands play live is on the way out. After Oct. 18, the only people who will complain about apathetic crowds are those who did not see Brit-punks Art Brut play at Black Cat.
Art Brut, touring for the second time since the April release of their recent album, “Art Brut vs. Satan,” played a show of their snarky, pop-culture referencing/critiquing punk rock last Sunday. Though they’ve been touring nearly non-stop, the band members played with an energy that would seem to imply that they had not opened every one of their shows over the last six years with “Formed A Band.” But there it was — after a short cover of The Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” the guitars sped up, and frontman Eddie Argos jumped into the air as “Formed a Band” broke out.
Throughout the song and, it would turn out, entire set, rhythm guitarist Jasper Future’s mouth was agape and his eyes alternately bug-out wide and clenched shut as if he were caught in the middle of a 90-minute orgasm.
This is the song that Art Brut wrote famously only a few hours after he had, well, formed the band, and it has served as a show opener for nearly all of its live performances. It’s easy to think, then, that the band would just slog through the song, going through the motions for the benefit of anybody not lucky enough to have already seen them live. But every member of the group thrashed around like he had just decided backstage that this show, and this show only, was going to be granted the full power of what Art Brut can bring to the world.
Argos jumped around and was constantly conversing with the audience; bassist Freddie Future sang along with every lyric (without a microphone) and drummer Mikey Breyer stood behind his kit, grinning like a maniac and sweating like he had just run three marathons.
Art Brut’s energy and playfulness make it easy to forget they emerged with post-punk revivalists like Interpol and fellow Brits Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys, who started out smiling but went on to make “serious, mature” albums. Perhaps Interpol forgot Ian Curtis can dance like nobody’s business.
While Arctic Monkeys have changed their sets by wiping organ solos overtop new songs, Art Brut merely changed focus, keeping a juvenile tone. The song “Modern Art,” about Argos wanting to rock out after visiting art galleries, was renamed “DC Comics.” Argos waded into the crowd, giving an impassioned monologue about how he loves DC Comics and about a visit to the company’s headquarters. When it ended, Argos began jumping around the stage, leading audience members around him to do the same.
“Good Weekend,” the band’s biggest hit so far, was interrupted by an Argos-led chant of “Art Brut, Top of the Pops.” Top of the Pops is dead, but the symbol remains — Art Brut deserves to hit the big time, to sell out the arenas that U2 has been sleepwalking into for decades.
The problem may be in the lyrics. Before playing “Rusted Guns of Milan,” Argos turned to his band and ordered, “Let’s glamorize bad sex.” Art Brut are willing to write music about everything from sexual incompetence to the joys of merely riding on public buses, and while the crowd that sang along with the lyrics “leave the light on” and “I’m fine when I am with my own hand” was all for it, it’s hard to deny that Art Brut lack the widespread appeal of a Kings of Leon.
Still, it’s difficult to imagine the frontman of that band giving a speech about how much he hates Radiohead or his old obsession with a high school girlfriend. We want Art Brut to hit it big, but we know they never will. Argos put it best when he yelled during “Demons Out!”: “If you like pop music, why do you let them abuse it? The record-buying public, we hate them!”
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
