Les Savy Fav @ Black Cat

Despite having released the critically-acclaimed Let's Stay Friends only last year, the set was rife with older material, including a five-song block from their career-defining singles compilation, Inches. This worked rather well since Les Savy Fav shows work best in venues no larger than the Black Cat, where there can be large amounts of audience participation. Harrington had no problem handing over the microphone for the end of "We'll Make a Lover of You", and letting the audience contribute the line "white on rice" to "One Way Widow". Granted, from a band that had their fans call in vocal contributions for Let's Stay Friends, this is not terribly surprising.

Not only did Harrington make sure that there was no barrier between band and audience, he made sure that there was no barrier between the band onstage and the bands watching to the side of the stage. Mid-set, Harrington decided that Dodos singer/guitarist/trombonist Meric Long didn't really need to finish that beer in his hand... so he poured the remainder of it on his head. Also, when someone backstage handed Harrington a man-size fork, he broke the action movie style character for the only time during the show, and the resulting banter was equally strange. He told us that the giant fork reminded him of his first band, the Junk Food Band, where in middle school he played on plates with forks and knew that he had to be in a real band. Only he discovered that the Junk Food Band was the best. Long live the Junk Food Band!

Les Savy Fav's openers weren't lightweights either. Brooklyn's The Big Sleep brought their own light setup, adding harsh bright white lights to a rough metal-meets-Trail of Dead sound. The Big Sleep rarely utilized their vocals, but they compensated by having truly copious amounts of booty-shaking bass. As in, your booty shook whether you wanted it to or not. First opener, The Dodos, were even better. With a sound that mixes a little Animal Collective, a little bluegrass, a little Sonic Youth and a lot of spirit, The Dodos successfully won over the audience without even standing up. Drummer Logan Kroeber created a full-bodied sound on his drums by duct-taping a tambourine to his foot, yet sparingly using the cymbals and kick drum while Meric Long slid skillfully over the guitar strings, his Zach Condon meets Panda Bear voice rich, albeit awash in reverb.

Long also joined Les Savy Fav onstage for some added trombone and before their three-song encore, bassist Syd Butler urged the fans to shout "Go Caps!" and "MVP" while they got fresh air for 35 seconds and Harrington changed into skin tight sparkly orange hotpants. After "Raging in the Plague Age", they finished up by urging various members of the audience (and opening bands) to yell "all night long!" into the microphone before giving us the closing credits of their "film" and saying that the president hadn't been saved after all. They probably could have gone on all night long. At ten minutes of 1 a.m., the floor was still jumping, hearts were still beating and Tim Harrington was still on the stage. He remained there until The Black Cat kicked everyone into the Red Room, but Les Savy Fav could've performed for another hour and no one in the audience would have complained.