Jesse Malin, neighbourhood guy. We like this picture because you can see some part of everyone in the band. The Best-Shod Band in England. Well, you'll have to take our word for it. Max Decharne vamps. Well, probably. Either that, or our photos from the Harry Connick Jr. show got mixed up with our Flaming Stars pictures.

We arrived at Brownie's at about 11:15, a few minutes before the opening act took the stage. Brownie's is, for those of you who have not had the pleasure, sort of like what you might imagine CBGB's was like before it became a Hallowed Institution. It's kind of cramped, the stage is matter-of-fact, the ceilings aren't very high, and a sizeable percentage of the clientele seem to be there more for the drinking than for the music. In spite of (or due to) these facts, it seemed like a nice change of pace for both of us; the venues we normally frequent are a bit more refined (just a bit, mind you), and the seediness of the club seemed entirely appropriate to both the band and the audience.

Jesse Malin took the stage at about 11:30, his acoustic guitar backed by an electric guitar, a bass player and a keyboardist. He cut a sort of diminutive, stockier Ryan Adams figure, complete with leather coat, football jersey, wild black hair and earnest looks. He was local in the way that Lou Reed is local, one of a number of troubadours who form part of the warp and weft of the city. His performance was of the type expected, though often he pleasantly surprised. His set-opener, "Brooklyn", took as its central conceit the particularly New York idea that moving to Brooklyn (a five-minute subway ride from Manhattan) is approximately equivalent to moving to Saskatoon. The girl in question had, you guessed it, broken his heart. The song was evocative, but could have done with a few fewer choruses. At the end of that track, the drummer joined the group, and the sound was thus systematized: the acoustic would start the festivities, joined by punchy bass lines, solid drum work and an occasional, tasteful brush from the electric guitarist. The pianist was a welcome addition to what would otherwise have been a much more tired sound; he added depth and flourish without ever resorting to Meatloaf-style histrionics.

Malin's songs tended to stick with the Bruce Springsteen triumvirate: "I love you girl, though times are hard"; "Someday, Goddamn it, I'm going to buck the odds and get out of this hell-hole existence"; "The big man screws the little man, making it hard for a man to be a man, man". This was also our first experience with what will inevitably become a long line of "9/11" songs. Though somewhat overwrought, "Fallen Angels" was touching, especially coming from a native son to a crowd of city dwellers. Malin movingly connected images of snowfall, raining ash, and staring into darkness waiting for a phone call that's never going to come.

His limitations showed on a later song, which he announced he had written for Johnny Cash and Nick Cave. He performed it with only the piano for accompaniment, and his vocal chops simply weren't as accomplished as his songwriting. The verses came off well, but he chose to belt out the chorus in a register that was clearly uncomfortable for him -- and, by extension, for the audience. Quibbles aside, we have to say that he and his band won over a crowd that, at the set's inception, wanted nothing to do with him. Songs like "Queen of the Underworld" and the raucous closer "Wendy" more than made up for any shortcomings.

Looking like a extras from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, the Flaming Stars set up and took the stage with the practiced air of hardened criminals. Each member was outfitted in cheap, dirty, working-class black suits and -- we swear to God -- the nicest footwear we had ever seen. Apparently, we had stumbled across The Best-Shod Band in England. Relying predominantly on their back catalog, The Flaming Stars wasted no time in ripping into "Only Tonight" and thus introducing their new American audience to the frenetic, Brownian motion of their live show. Singer Max Decharne, who looks and sounds like the abandoned child of Shane MacGowan and Nick Cave, played his Thin Black Duke card to its fullest whilst doing splits and suggestively slithering around his microphone stand. Decharne kept a keyboard nearby, which he'd occasionally play with the fury of Jerry Lee Lewis and the technical skill of Flock of Seagulls. In a world of his own, firebrand drummer and Ian McKaye-look-alike Joe Whitney fucking destroyed what we later learned was a borrowed drumkit. Whitney possesses the rare ability to overplay without his pyrotechnics intruding on the song's feel. He was a whirling dervish, one hand bashing fills on the skins and the other clutching a Bass Ale, from which he took large and frequent swigs. Joe's brother Huck was the All-England Lovely Lad Contest winner ten years running -- much to the chagrin of Jarvis Cocker. Seriously, Huck Whitney played an uncompromising "rhythmn" (sic) guitar in conjunction with the reverbed, Telecaster-wielding Mark Hosking, to throw up a wave of distorted genius that infected every song like a virus. Representing cool Vegas chic, bassist Paul Dempsey made certain that every song stayed firmly rooted to his rumbling underpinnings.

When the Flaming Stars want to rock, you'd hate to be the one to stop them. On tracks like "Bring Me the Rest of Alfredo Garcia", "The Face on the Bar Room Floor" and "Like Trash", the Stars were unrelenting in their effort to bring the house down upon the fifty or so sweaty, shaking witnesses. More than willing to break up their set and show off their range, The Flaming Stars will play songs with a jazzy, noirish, country or Spanish sound to offset the dark, smoke-filled beach-party feel that is their core sound. They also managed to throw in some devastating ballads, such as "Forget My Name", "Revenge" and "Bury My Heart at Pier 13", in which Decharne croons, "She has the face that launched a thousand late nights." The Trojan War allusion is overused, yes, but effective regardless. The Flaming Stars' music seamlessly blends '60s surf rock, punk and the American Southwest with both celerity and taste. With a foreigner's eye and ear, Decharne's lyrics draw on from a wide range of these American influences, creating a vision of a dark John Ford world populated by desperate men and cruel-hearted women; it has no basis in history, but it's easy to embrace. It is this suspension of disbelief that draws the listener into Decharne's bordertown mythology and makes the music attractive -- even dangerous.

Suffice it to say, the Brownies audience was screaming for CDs after the show, and greedily bought them up so that they could relive the show back home. (Full disclosure: we bought three).

Article and photos by Brett McCallon and Daniel Arizona.