Photo and review by DCist contributor Valerie Paschall

Providence, RI’s Get Him Eat Him has their fair share of influential friends. They’ve opened tours for behemoths such as Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire, and Beirut’s Zach Condon plays on their latest album, Arms Down, produced by former Plan axe-man Jason Caddell. Despite all of this, they have released pockets of blog-love, but have essentially flown under the radar. Last night’s show at The Rock and Roll Hotel with locals The Fake Accents and Icelandic collective Benni Hemm Hemm was the sort of show where at any given time, one-third to one-half of the males in the audience were members of the other bands on the bill.

Get Him Eat Him may have been the name on top of the bill, but Benni Hemm Hemm pulled off the surprise breakout performance of the night. They gave no introduction so no one had quite noticed that they’d started their set, continuing their conversations until the five piece horn section grabbed everyone’s attention. Their lullabies with six part vocal harmonies and rhythmic glockenspiel were soothing and pretty, which made the introduction of their song “Fight,” from the band’s self-titled album, all that much more hilarious. Singer Benedikt H. Hermannsonn described it as a song about what happens when two people are in a small room together for too long and went on to deadpan in a drowsily melancholic baritone, “We have a fight…and you lose.” With a sound that owes more to Glenn Branca than Sigur Ros, these imports gained their audience’s attention without being over-loud.

The first obvious thing about Get Him Eat Him is that over and above everything else, these guys are huge fans of good indie rock. Their influences, such as Guided By Voices and Ted Leo, are obvious and acclaimed and they were clearly playing to a crowd full of other people that shared their mindset. Singer Matt LeMay said that they wrote the dissonant “Push & Pull,” upon discovering that they’d be recording in DC, subsequently causing a crowd member to shout that the song made him want to stop doing drugs. Even their quick nod to Spoon’s “Don’t Make Me a Target,” during their setup garnered shouts of approval. They were clearly amongst kindred spirits.

But while it’s easy to play the “name the influences” game with Get Him Eat Him, it’s far more fun to just watch them play their college radio inspired pop-rock. LeMay not only channels the Ted Leo vocal sound (which was especially obvious during “Present Tenses” and show opener “2x2”) but also his outbursts of energy, at one point making a frenzied grab at his mic stand. Despite LeMay’s stage presence, the band’s show-stealer was diminutive bassist Joe Posner whose jumps off the speakers, shouts into the mic and additional beating onto Jeff Wood’s drum kit seemed like actual inspired energy rather than kitschy attention getters.

Get Him Eat Him proved that they knew how to put on a fun show of hooky treats but they could use some work on ending it. At the end of what just seemed like another song, LeMay thanked someone for making dessert and then they were done. Their lack of pretension was refreshing but their abrupt exit left the audience audibly uncomfortable and confused. At least until Posner guitarist Jason Sigal hopped off of the stage and personally thanked various audience members for coming to the show. It’s clear that they haven’t quite reached the level of their more famous contemporaries; the progress that they’ve made since 2005’s Geography Cones, and their genuine enthusiasm onstage and off are good predictors of brighter futures and bigger crowds for this Providence quintet.