Leaving everything onstage is the sort of description that’s only fitting for performers that never leave the stage. However, Les Savy Fav, art-punk auteurs and masterful breakers of the fourth wall, have always seen the stage as more of a suggestion than a necessity. Admittedly, the shock factor of entering the crowd has become less of a shock within the past few years as bands like Double Dagger and Monotonix have gained a bigger following. Yet as their style of theatricality is no longer 100 percent unique, Les Savy Fav remains a must-see band because they do this sort of act better than anybody else.
Since the New York band has been around for over fifteen years, some parts of their stage show are to be expected. Frontman Tim Harrington will always come out in some outlandish costume that will ultimately end up in the corner of the stage as he prances around in a skintight alternative. He will also spend no less than 30 percent of the time either amongst the audience or good-naturally picking on them. During Saturday night’s show, as in their last Black Cat performance, Harrington ate a pair of concertgoer’s earplugs and put on multiple pairs of other peoples’ glasses. However, there are always some new elements in each show. For starters, a garden snowman was airborne for a large chunk of the show. Harrington actually performed briefly from underneath the Black Cat Mainstage and stood atop two monitors whilst onstage. He was also condiment happy, passing out celery to the crowd at the beginning of the show. Furthermore, if he had actually succeeded in taking photos with the DCist camera, we’d have printed them.
Yet while Les Savy Fav concerts are essentially laundry lists of weird things that Tim Harrington does, the best parts of the show are when the crowd sings along. Often times this meant that the crowd was singing more than Harrington — although some of their newer songs, like “Appetites” from the tepidly received Root for Ruin, gained almost as much shouting along as the tracks they played from Inches and the encore of “Who Rocks the Party?” from The Cat and the Cobra.
However, the move that spoke volumes about the band’s current state was their merch sales at the end of the show. They had five customized ketchup bottles with the phrase “This is What’s Become of Us” for sale for a penny each — and nothing else. What’s become of Les Savy Fav in 2011 is that none of them absolutely need to be touring to make a living and on the artistic front; they have nothing left to prove. But they remain on the road for the fun of it, and that’s why the shows remain fresh.
