Saturday, March 18, 2006
Do You Like The Like?
I think I like The Like, though opinion on the LA three-piece seems pretty divided. Girl friends have said "They are all in the NME for boys to ogle" and then I read over at Wears The Trousers a review of their afternoon Camden Barfly gig which I also attended, which said of the band: "a perfect, classic indie pop-rock threepiece with a masterful grasp of the epic and the intimate". Their music is really nice indie-pop-rock, which is perhaps why it is receiving the kind of mixed response. For a girl band to be widely accepted, they must be truly exceptional - like The Long Blondes will be (although, reassuringly, they have two men to play instruments) with iconic frontwoman Kate Jackson, but to think of an all-girl band who are even remotely as widely successful as, say, Franz Ferdinand or The Kaiser Chiefs might cause brain over-fry. The truth is that far more average "boy" bands can enjoy widespread success without any discernible talent than can all-girls bands.
But enough rant, the Like are good. I especially like singer Z Berg's voice, it's a bit croaky and a bit floaty. And their music is both polished and grunge-tinged in a way that reminds me of Hole's Celebrity Skin. Live they were very endearing in a Los Angeles precocious rich kid kinda way, expressing faux-horror at the fact that nobody in the Sunday afternoon crowd had been to church that morning, before later remarking "Phew, it's hot in here, but I guess that's 'cos we're all going to hell, right!?", coming over like an indie-rock Scarlett Johannsen. And to top it off, LA's most precocious rich kid, Kelly Osbourne, came over after their set to catch up. Their album, Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? (bad title, nice album) is out now. And you can hop over to their MySpace to hear some songs from it.
posted by Unknown at 3/18/2006 01:12:00 pm
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