Spouse The French Kicks Hot Hot Heat's Bays

First up was Spouse, a Portland, Maine-based outfit led by singer/guitarist Jose Ayerve. The band's web site, my only source of information, was absolutely no help in identifying his supporting players. There were two drummers, one of whom I'm assuming was Michael Merenda, and a Neil Young look-alike (but not, sadly, sound-alike) on additional guitar and keys, plus a bass player, apparently Daniel Pollard. The web site mysteriously lists a couple of women as Spouse members, but neither were there that night.

I'd listened to a couple of clips before leaving and wasn't sure why Spouse would need two drummers to accomplish an essentially power pop sound. Live, though, the band comes across as incredibly rhythmic, with everyone playing the same jagged, angular riffs under and around the hook-driven melodies. Ayerve's wickedly insinuating vocals take a back seat to the 16th note interplay of drums and guitar. It's almost as if the Apples in Stereo suddenly hired a Dischord band to back them up, creating an oddly compelling mix of abstract breaks and pop-oriented verse and chorus. The band has not really developed much in the way of stage presence -- and they were battling early evening apathy throughout their set. Still, by show's end, they were dipping into some fairly addictive tunes "Boots and Pants" and "Love Can't Save This Love" and making the lost teenagers up front bob their heads, if not actually move their feet.

Next up were Brooklyn-based quintet the French Kicks. I've been playing the band's One Time Bells off and on for about a year now, and I'm still discovering new things to like about its off-kilter pop experiments. This is a band that uses everything as percussion -- not just drums but pounding keyboard notes and fast, nervous guitar -- then lays a smooth croon over the whole thing. The smooth part takes all kinds of forms -- pure Elvis Costello pop, airy Hall and Oates soul, looping, janglingly rounds of song -- but it comes primarily from Nick Stumpf. A drummer turned frontman, Stumpf conveys an edgy discomfort in every inch of his well over six foot frame, eyes locked just over the audience's heads as he grips the mic with both hands. His brother Larry flanks him on bass and just to the side is Matt Stinchcomb, the other founding guitarist. Josh Wise, who alternates between guitar and various keyboards, stands impassively at the left, making little eye contact but quietly nailing everything he plays. However, it is the drums that both fracture and unify the band's sound, and they are ably and imaginatively played by Hugh McIntosh.

The French Kicks' sound is not an easy one to absorb, balancing rhythm and counter rhythm, melody and discord. The pieces have to be in perfect alignment for the whole thing to make sense, and tonight the sound guys just could not get it right. The vocals were barely audible during the first three songs, including the excellent, keyboard-driven "Wrong Side", despite repeated requests from the band. The shimmering soul-flavored "Crying Just for Show" sounded muddy and confused, and it was not until "Right in Time" that the sound began to fill the room the way it ought to. The next several tunes, I think all from One Time Bells, made the evening worthwhile; they included "One Time Bells" and "Sunday Night is Fair".

Headliners Hot Hot Heat were up next, and I got the first of a series of warnings that the best part of the night was over. First, Nick Stumpf ended his set by thanking the headliners and calling them, somewhat ominously, "really nice people". And okay, they probably are nice people, but this is where the opening band usually talks about how great the next act is, musically speaking. Second, the room started to fill visibly with teenage girls, some of whom will probably have excellent musical taste at some point a decade or so in the future. Third, I heard a young girl behind me asking someone, "Are these guys on MTV?" (They're not just on MTV. They've been banned from MTV because of the ersatz political content of their video for "Bandages" -- which, I imagine, makes them even more whatever she was looking for.) And finally, it took them a really, really long time to set up. Actually, they got someone else to do that for them -- one guy, whose final prep seemed to involve sticking about six picks into guitarist Dante DeCaro's mike stand. They were all gone by the evening's end. See what major label money can pay for?

My exposure to Hot Hot Heat before this evening came in the form of about three songs -- "Bandages", "Get In or Get Out" and "5 times out of 100". I liked the band's wiry rhythm section -- that's Dustin Hawthorne on bass and Paul Hawley on drums -- and its spastic bursts of guitar. The vocals had an appealing Cure-like roughness to them. The songs were maybe not very interesting or insightful, but they had a good share of explosive energy and surprising sweetness.

What you can't tell from the record is that singer Steve Bays looks like an unholy cross between Barry Manilow and Rod Stewart, and his frenetic faux-showmanship is better suited to Las Vegas than small beer-stained clubs. It is almost as if he's in a different band from the other guys -- like maybe Wham! or Duran Duran or something. It's unfortunate, because the rest of the band is tight and nasty as hell, and I mean that in the best possible way. The laconic Hawthorne smoked a butt and turned his back on the crowd as he cranked out truly murderous punk bass grooves. He and Hawley locked in to a bone-shaking rhythm that just made a mockery of Bays's synthy keyboard riffs and coy jailbait moves. And DeCaro, twitching and writhing with some inner demon, blasted a hole through the entire enterprise. He's a nihilist, a destroyer, and you have to wonder how he feels about David Cassidy up front.

Actually, you don't. This is a band that just signed to Warner and already appears to be showing the strains of making compromises. Just watch Bays trying to chat up the audience from time to time, stopped dead in his tracks by DeCaro's sudden bursts of guitar. "This is a song about .." Slashing chord. "We're so glad to be..." Noodling notes up top. "You can buy our..." A single brilliant note. It would be funny -- who am I kidding, it is funny -- if it wasn't so dysfunctional.

We knew when the set was over because DeCastro ran out of notes and Hawthorne's cigarette was burning down and the teenaged girls were dancing with their hands in the air, mouthing the words to "Bandages". So again, we were left to wonder about the great divide between pop and popular. Why do silly, pandering acts reach stardom? Why do intelligent, difficult, challenging bands stay cultish? Is it because people get fed the musical equivalent of McDonald's from birth or because they truly like the taste? And finally, what difference does it make? I don't know which side you're on, but I've been playing my French Kicks CD all day long.

Article and photos by Jennifer Kelly.