The 11th arrondissement of Paris is looking particularly washed out and drab this evening. The party centre of the French capital, Place de la Bastille is still busy with pack-a-mac American tourists and students darting for the Happy Hour toting bars but the general easy-going bustle has been transformed into a drowned-rats-scuttling-for-shelter scenario. The Café de la Danse, despite being at the centre of the quarter, is nevertheless an unusual choice for American groups Le Loup and Scary Mansion, in that it is actually a small seated theatre. Twelve or so rows of plastic seats rise up the back wall of the room, whilst plonked smack bang in the middle of the audience is the sound-desk. Listening to Scary Mansion go through their sound-check at six-ish, the surroundings all seem to me very lo-key. But then I've been wrong before...
Scary Mansion and Le Loup, both signed to Bordeaux-based Talitres Records, are playing together for a number of Le Loup's French dates. Scary Mansion, headed by Brooklynite Leah Hayes, stroll out first to polite Parisian applause and a tiny smidgen of whooping (see W&H's interview with Sam Simkoff for more on particular phenomenon). It's a rather underwhelming reaction which the band set out to dispel.
Not that they wouldn't have appreciated the irony of such a reaction, purveyors as they are of music that can seem almost dainty, and heart-breakingly fragile at times, and menacingly powerful at others. Launching without so much as a word into "New Hampshire", from the group's 2008 album "Every Joke Is Half The Truth", they set out their stall early on. The band is built around Leah Hayes' delicate, almost broken vocals, and this particular track is an exquisite example of the fragile beauty to be found in Scary Mansion's catalogue. The track is heavily reliant on Leah's vocals, backed as it is for much of its duration by the "thunderstick", a dulcimer-like instrument, and light, jazzy drumming. The set, much like the albums, displays a Jekyll and Hyde personality, flashing between sweet, lonely folk tunes and rough grunge-rock. "Yer Grief", straight off the latest release "Make Me Cry", is backed by an incredibly funky drum beat that reminded me of The Helio Sequence, before the overdrive is splashed liberally over the thunderstick's delicate tones. This warm, scuzzy brand of rock combines with the dry ice pouring across the stage to create a woozy but nevertheless dynamic ambience. The band ensure that no-one in the crowd has a chance to doze off or catch their breath by blasting each track out the backdoor of the previous one, ensuring that the set, stuffed with eight songs, never gets a chance to slow down. "New Hampshire" is of a more reflective manner, with Hayes' breathy vocals backed by minimal thunderstick chords and a scratchy drumbeat. The set hits a rousing peak, however, with "Intro" (somewhat bizarrely balanced at number seven on EJIHTT) and its cooed "I am afraid/if I go blind/I will still see it" line, which cruises straight into "Scum Inside". Taking the softly, not-so-softly approach, the track (which follows the "Make Me Cry" version and not the earlier one that appears on the 2008 release) leaps headlong into garage-rock territory, complete with cut-glass harmonies provided by Haye's sister, Vanessa. The band heads off to warm, if hardly ecstatic, applause and I get up to stretch my legs.
The two albums to Le Loup's name are intriguingly different in provenance: the first, "The Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations' Millennium General Assembly" (more on that can be found, again, in W&H's interview with Sam Simkoff), was mostly a solo affair, and was profoundly influenced by post-college insecurity and Simkoff's uncertainty regarding his future. "Family", whilst being markedly more typist-friendly in title, was an altogether different beast, written by the group as a whole, with Simkoff nevertheless retaining his role as creative hub. I was intrigued to see not only how the first album's intensely intricate and electronic-influenced music would translate in a live setting, but also how the band would marry the two albums' respective spirits. The group opens proceedings with the autoharp-driven "Saddle Mountain", which also does the same job on "Family". Simkoff has said before that this track was written as an intended bridge between the first and second albums, but with a far more optimistic slant. Thus, on stage, this grandiose, bucolic paean to new beginnings explodes into a majestic, stately dose of widescreen rock. Within the first minute of Le Loup's set, they've banished the intense feeling of claustrophobic from which the first album derives all its mesmeric attraction. But as with anything in this world, every action has a reaction. So where does all this nervous energy go?
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The band next move into "Beach Town", complete with its programmed beat background nod to the first album, which live is transformed into wiry, dance-rock that wouldn't sound entirely out of place on the new Yeasayer album. The funky bass seems to propel Simkoff around the stage, loose-limbed and unrestrained. Indeed, this sense of liberation permeates into the live renditions of "Le Loup (Fear Not)" and "We Are Gods! We Are Wolves!", given a much deserved outing here. But before launching into these, Simkoff, with a flash of foresight, requests that the front two or three rows stand up. The reaction up to this point has been polite, enthusiastic even, but not what you would normally expect from a gig. The band clearly feel more comfortable with the segregation lifted, and so a few of the hardier fans, with this reporter in tow, shuffle down to the space in front of the stage to offer their support. The looped banjo of "Le Loup (Fear Not)"'s album incarnation is less prevalent in the live form, and as a result the song, released of its suffocating straitjacket, gradually expands into a joyous, euphoric, quasi-rave of dance party proportions. The same beautiful sense of anticipation is still there, and the energy that courses through the song has those hardy fans at the front who have made the transition popping shapes and chanting "darkness" and "terrorise" as Simkoff's pained-sounding vocals on the album become joyous cries of absolution on the live stage.
"Family" marks a return back to more recent material, and the woozy psychedelic ambience and tribal dance rhythms flow smoothly into the sophomore album's highpoint, "Forgive Me", a five minute blast of jubilation that takes the listener over what could be the great plains of Africa. In a live setting the track incites in the crowd a primordial desire to move, as the throbbing rhythm and choral shouts send adrenalin flowing through veins, leaving arms and legs flailing. As the song falls away, from its feedback-drenched ashes comes "Outside Of This Car, The End Of The World!", reborn in a live form that prolongs the aural ecstasy for those assembled. The swirling sounds and cacophony of bells, percussion and beats eventually slide to a halt and the sweat-sodden group launch into their final track, and fitting set closer, "Celebration". Clocking in at nearly eight minutes, the heady groove which is painstakingly built up in the theatre eventually sees four guys (including Simkoff) hammering away at the various drum kits assembled about the stage as the mid-song "punch-back" (as Simkoff puts it) sets it back on the rails. On tape it's incredibly effective, but live it is doubly cathartic as the four-edged battery rips through the churning haze, leaving the route clear for the home straight. Such is the potency of "Celebration" that it's almost a shame that Le Loup have to come out for an encore. But they do, and proceed to roll through a well-earned congratulatory rendition of "Sherpa". The crowd at the front of the theatre is by this point drained, a rapturous haze hanging over them, shivers still running up and down the spine.
And so I should return to the action-reaction question posed above. In the swirl of wide-screen tribal rock that is "Family", the nervous energy of "The Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations' Millennium General Assembly" is converted into throbbing, positive energy which flows down from the stage into the front row of the crowd. Pulsing and rhythmic, Le Loup prove that a back-catalogue of such diverse sounds and energies can be combined to glorious and inventive effect. If the first album marked a period of uncertainty in Simkoff's, he's certainly found his way now.
Le Loup on MySpace
Scary Mansion on MySpace
Café de la Danse online
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