This writer will be the first to say that there are simply too many club meeting/special event announcements posted around school. It is as though scores of random clubs come out of the woodwork solely to scrawl in sidewalk chalk or plaster every accessible vertical surface for their obscure, highly specialized meetings that take place at inconvenient times in mysterious places on campus.
Certain events hosted by certain clubs warrant the excessive PR. Some club-sponsored events are so important that they need to be shouted from the rooftops and trumpeted with as much publicity as this school can offer. The AppleJam Fall Bash, tonight's free performance of Detroit's indie heroes Thunderbirds Are Now! at Hotung Cafe is such an event.
TAN! is an awesome band. The brash, infectious art-punk of Ryan Allen (vocals, guitars), Scott Allen (keys, vocals, samples), Mike Durgan (drums), and Howard Chang (bass) both spits and snarls with the caustic fury of garage rock and honest-to-goodness punk, and glistening with the keyboards and synths of '80s new-wave.
Mixed down into their hilariously titled songs are the Allens' sassy, ironic, and often bizarre lyrics. On "Better Safe than Safari," from the band's 2005 LP "Justamustache," their dual vocals blare, "Signal's break up like long distance lovers / And scaredy-cat kids hide under covers / Systems break up like long distance friends / Who wants to be real? / It's more fun to pretend," with snotty abandon.
Fueled with more energy than Philip the Hyper-Hypo Kid, TAN!'s performances are sights to behold. "Their show is incredibly energetic, dancy yet manic. Even if you don't know the songs...they get the audience involved," AppleJam president Paul Farris said.
Thunderbirds Are Now! rely on their songs' urgent, angular melodies, lightning vocals, and upbeat samples to galvanize their audiences instead of unnecessarily fast drumming and the incoherent howling of a lovesick adult dressed in black. The result is safer dancing, and a generally more pleasant concert experience.
The band debuted in 2003 with their most punk album, "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief." After releasing two EP's on two different labels and relentlessly touring bars and small clubs, TAN! was finally picked up by French Kiss Records, home of fellow art-punks Les Savy Fav and 2005's bar rock breakouts/ tour mates The Hold Steady.
With French Kiss, the band released "Justamustache," which, coupled with more rigorous touring, has vaulted the band from relative unknowns to cult and critical darlings. They're poised to leap out of the underground and into the general public. According to the prescient Farris, who for last year's event booked The Arcade Fire for this same event, who "a week later were on Letterman and were in the New York Times," "(TAN!) are relatively below the mainstream radar right now... but we [AppleJam] think they are going to make the jump to big stars soon."
As if a free show by a brilliant band on the cusp of stardom wasn't good enough, it will be at Hotung. The cafe's minute size and small capacity not only make for a private setting, but they also should concentrate and even bolster the band's already fiery songs. Hotung's clean acoustics and carpeted floors should prevent TAN!'s dense melodies from deteriorating into an unintelligible mess.
Setting the stage tonight will be Boston's The Constants and The Blanks. All told, Tufts should be in for a night of loud, raucous, and free punk fun, headlined by one of music's newest best acts performing in a venue they were born to play.
