“Look how much fun we’re having, you should be having that much fun too,” shouted Eddie Argos. The Art Brut front-man is certainly a jovial one. Tall and lanky with a clumsy foot, Argos appeared to be enjoying his visit to Tempe. Combining punk and art rock, Art Brut aren’t the most talented or innovative act going, but they sure know how to give 100% regardless of the crowd’s response. And in this Friday night’s case at the always lame Marquee Theater, the crowd was weak.
Opening for headliners The Hold Steady, Art Brut rattled through some of their most well-known songs (“Pump up the Volume,” “My Little Brother) with substance. If you took out the dance beats in Franz Ferdinand and added a couple of shot glasses of garage rock, they’d sound like Art Brut. In between doing pushups on stage or jumping rope with his microphone cord, Argos was a handful, but it gave Art Brut’s otherwise indistinguishable brand of indie rock a blast of color and humor.
Headliners The Hold Steady were making their second appearance in the Phoenix area in five months. Still touring in support of 2006’s Boys and Girls in America, the New York via Midwest five-piece led by the charismatic Craig Finn ( who always appears too scholarly to be a rock star), were a bit less drunk than that June appearance..even if this was Friday night. In fact, the regular fun-loving hard-drinking band were in “bring home to your parents” form. Perhaps, because guitarist Tad Kubler’s father was in attendance.
Finn, as usual, acted out the songs with his hands in between spastic clapping. His third-person stories involving the youth of America, (seems like every song begins with “she was”) still deliver that tired Springsteen comparison. Maybe it’s the voice, maybe it’s the tinkering piano, maybe it’s the bar-room vibe their simple classic rock sound radiates. Either way, it’s not a bad tag to play by.
Although the club was barely half full, and the crowd seemed to be sleepy-eyed sober, The Hold Steady played hard and made it appear they were enjoying themselves. The Boys and Girls in America songs (“Chips Ahoy,” “Stuck Between Stations,” “Party Pit”) still deliver a sense of thrill and Finn still conveys his vocals with gusto.
However, the highlights were the new songs (“Ask Her For Some Adderall,” “Jamaica) off the forthcoming new Hold Steady album, that the boys will be working on shortly. The new ones still possess that “Hold Steady” sound but experiment more with Kubler’s guitar, moving a bit away from their straight-forward bar-rock. As the band opened the encore with “First Night,” the crowd finally came alive as they sang along in the “Boys and Girls in America” refrain.
The Marquee Theater has the effect of making a Friday night seem like a Tuesday for most bands, but Art Brut and The Hold Steady knew they had a job to do. And as Finn said at the end of the show, “there is so much joy in doing what we do,” – you almost had to believe him.
