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.