Savoir flair

Rock heroes Les Savy Fav bring the party and save the day.

by Chris Handyside
3/29/00

Fans have endorsed this reworking of rock's geometry.

Les Savy Fav
w/ Love As Laughter and Poopy Time

Sunday, April 2
Gold Dollar
(3129 Cass Ave., Detroit)
833-6873 for info.

The clarion call goes out across the land: "Who’s gonna save rock ‘n’ roll?!" Every couple years or so, it seems that guitar-based rock needs a swift kick in the ass, an urgent reminder, an infusion of madcap energy – something to remind children and grown-ups of the rock revolution that the music was never meant to travel down the middle of the road. Sonic Youth, Devo, Pere Ubu, Fugazi, Brainiac and the Talking Heads – all of them fucked with rock, prodding it from the outside while living in its skin. They answered the call and made rock ‘n’ roll, if not fun, then certainly worth watching again. Enter this year’s model, Les Savy Fav, a foursome of lads who, coincidentally, met at the same institution of higher education as the Talking Heads, the Rhode Island School of Design, started performing in 1995, and seem poised to carry the rock torch to the far corners of the land.

The music press (yeah, like we know anything!) and, more importantly, rock fans, have endorsed the Fav’s reworking of rock’s geometry. But don’t let Les Savy Fav guitarist Seth Jabour know that the band – which is known as much for its intelligence as for its galvanizing, showstopping live performances – is going to save rock. For the men of Les Savy Fav, it’s much simpler.

They just want to make great records and rock the house when they play live.

This is, after all, the band that asks in its song of the same name the tongue-in-cheek (?) rhetorical musical question, "Who rocks the party?" before alerting all partygoers at an upscale Gotham City shindig, a la the Beasties, to "fuck the champagne!" before thoroughly turning the joint upside down.

On record and when LSF rolls into town, frontman Tim Harrington ranges from apocalyptic street-corner preacher to cooing, poetic indie-rock nice guy with all the quick-change gusto of a versatile po-mo radio theater character actor – albeit one that seems to mean every word he utters, screams or sings. Oh, yeah, and on LSF’s last tour, he adopted the persona of a salty dog naval captain – beard, hat, outfit, the whole nine y-aaargh-ds.

"He’s a pretty spontaneous guy. He looks toward the audience as props and looks around for props and he dives in and uses it. If the song is badass or pop, he takes on a different persona," says Jabour.

"He’s a little more conceptual live where the rest of us are concentrating on playing an instrument."

As a unit, Les Savy Fav unravels its sometimes paranoid, sometimes lyrical, oftentimes angular, always rocking musical madness one gig at a time. As Jabour says, "Performance in and of itself is a completely different art form. We’re not afraid to make things sound a little fucked-up or quirky."

"When we make a record, we want to make a great record. When we play live we just wanna make a good live show. As products, they kind of do exist in their own worlds." (Unless you want to make a rock opera - ed.)

And ask Jabour about one of his most memorable shows on Les Savy Fav’s nearly constant tour schedule and he won’t hit you with platitudes about your hometown’s great crowd or wax poetic about the virtues of fans in LSF’s hometown of New York. Nope: "It’s kind of a crap shot. We played Fayetteville Ark. Kids drove two-and-a-half hours from Little Rock to see us," he says.

"We had never even played Arkansas before and didn’t even know we had a fan base there. These kids knew all the words to the songs. They weren’t chickenshit to dance and sing along. They were a great audience – of all places!"

It’s this element of surprise that keeps Jabour rolling. "I try not to have any preconceived notions of rock ‘n’ roll and being in a band. But I can really only speak for myself," he says.

But, he says of Les Savy Fav as a whole, "We try to stick to the formulas we create for ourselves."

And that, my friends, is how one rock ‘n’ roll band answers the Batsignal to save whoever they can reach from the evil powers of mainstream rock. Right now, nobody does it better than Les Savy Fav.

Chris Handyside is Metro Times music editor.