November 10, 2005
Opinionist: Test Icicles @ The Cake Shop
A few times a week, Gothamist publishes music reviews by our contributor Jeff Baum. The opinions below belong entirely to the author.
The Test Icicles are far from your usual Brit-hype product. They are not your new favorite band, as Amy Philips at Pitchfork so brazenly declared a few weeks ago (see the last item). They aren't cute and cheeky and they don't play songs with instantly recognizable hooks or insightful lyrics. They're simply a hardcore band. While they are receiving the same type of "potential mainstream superstar" treatment by the press as bands like Bloc Party, The Kaiser Chiefs and, most recently, the Arctic Monkeys have gotten, they have no business in the same company as them. What we have here is a different animal altogether.
Last night I went down to Ludlow Street to see for myself what all the buzz is about. The Cake Shop is a really lousy place to see a show unless you get all the way to the front, but I was able to fight my way up right before their set. I was very glad I did. This band does not let up. While there was a curious mix of pre-recorded backing tracks and live instruments, (the iPod perched on the front left monitor provided, at the very least, all of the percussion...there was no drummer on stage) the band played their heart out. They screeched at the mic as if they were about to swallow it whole. Not one song went by where at least one of them didn't end up on the ground. Mic stands got kicked around like traffic cones in front of a frat house and sweat poured off each of the band members faces as if this was their last show on earth. It was a noisy mess of sound that devastated the 20 or so lucky fans that were actually close enough to see them perform. While they made a couple frustrated comments about the audience not seeming into it, I don't think it was any fault of their own. I imagine the crowd consisted mostly of the curious Pitchfork faithful who were stuck in the back and couldn't see the show anyway.
It was really a great set. If added to a hardcore bill for their next jaunt through the states, I could see these guys gaining quite a following. They've just been inadvertently marketed to the wrong crowd.
Check out a few songs, along with the video for their hit single "Circle Square Triangle" at their myspace page. They are opening for fellow British hypesters Art Brut at Northsix tomorrow. Pictures from last night's show are posted here.
|
i think we need to define our terms here. when i hear the word 'hardcore,' i assume you mean nuance-free punk with some dude hoarsely shouting about polictics. this band isn't doing that, they're doing that disco/dance/punk thing. does hardcore mean something else now?
I couldn't understand what he was shouting about, but with the exception of the catchy single on the myspace page, there is very little disco/dance about these three.
When I say hardcore I'm talking about bands like Blood Brothers, Lightning Bolt, etc. These guys fit in that mold.
when I think of hardcore, bands like Ill Niño and Merauder come to mind. Shit, this sounds like the Killers for chrissakes.
I agree with poster #1, this stuff is pretty poppy, and a bit too pseudo for anyone born before 1985, definitely not what anyone from that age group would call "hardcore".
The Test Icicles have loud guitars and noise, but a hardcore band they ain't. Domino is indeed the right label for them. They're far too cheeky for a real hardcore label.
I hear a LOT of dance-punk (or whatever it's called this week) in their songs. Take the Bloc Party, add loud techno beats (even moreso in the live setting), throw in distorted guitars, scream over the top...and you've got the Test Icicles.
If we're going to be picky about labels, then it's worth pointing out that Lightning Bolt and Blood Brothers are by no means "hardcore" bands either. You could, I suppose, call them "noise-rock" bands, but the term Hardcore is pretty tightly wrapped up in a specific cultural moment, which neither of those bands is part of.
But while I can understand where you're coming from when you use the word "hardcore" to describe Lightning Bolt, applying that label to the Test Icicles stikes me as an absurd cooptation. Regardless, comparing the Test Icicles to Lightning Bolt makes sense only to the extent that both bands are familiar with distortion pedals.
I don't think that "dance punk" is necessarily a good way to describe them, since that evokes images of bands like Gang of 4, but there certainly are "disco punk" elements - just listen to the audio sample for "Sharp". In any case, the Test Icicles are certainly going for a pop sensibility, both in their music and in their design aesthetic.
Overall, I think I may agree with sp in sentiment, even if I don't think the Test Icicles actually sound like the Killers (thank god for small favors), because what they DO sound just like is "your next favorite band". Maybe their live show is differt, but to talk about the Test Icicles as if they are standing firm in some kind of "authintic" punk roots is just silly.
What I wonder most about here is why Gothamist is so careful to put a disclaimer on top of this article. Perhaps they're afraid of offending the Cake Shop?
Well, semantics aside, I still disagree. There is a huge gap between this and Bloc Party, etc. In the grand scheme of things, the casual listener would draw the line right between the two. One is instantly accessible and the other is not. That's all I was really trying to get at.
That disclaimer is on all my posts, not just this one. It has to do with my use of the first person, I believe.
They remind me of At the Drive in crossed with Bloc Party. It's definetly dance punk, but that doesn't mean it neccessarily sounds like any of the current 'dance punk' bands out there. Their sound is undeniably punk, yet undeniably energetic and dancelable. The album screams energy. It's defeintly not hardcore though, which personally i find unlistenable. There are hooks here, catchy choruses and danceable beats. From my limited knowledge of what defines hardcore, I'm pretty sure that all three are frowned up in the genre.
It's different, at least in the terms of what's been coming out and geting hyped from the new york/london scene.Must every band have the same influences and sound exactly the same? More so than Art Brut(which i'mnot saying they sound anything like), they come across as the anti-NME band.
Can't wait for tomorrow's show.
Yuppie-ist wouldn't know hardcore if it smacked them upside the face. Let's be fair; this is not a hardcore-themed blog.
the fact that it didnt smack them upside the face so that they left with a few teeth missing and a bloody nose is an undeniable sign that this isnt hardcore, but just hipster poser pop punk. This stuff could be playing on z100.
you people are so hardcore! hardcore blogging! hardcore debating! i just achieved orgasm.
my two cents: i think it's pretty awesome in this day and age of so much pre-packaged crap that there is some band of nineteen year olds that pretty much everyone can describe/disagree in a completely different way. am i the only one who thinks this? you could make an argument that they are influnced by/sound like pretty much any goddamn band in the world, past or present. to me they sound like a young nine inch nails trying to imitate a pere ubu/bloc party song. whatever, i like it. a lot. and i can not WAIT for the show tomorrow.
Well, semantics aside, I still disagree. There is a huge gap between this and Bloc Party, etc.In the grand scheme of things, the casual listener would draw the line right between the two.
Well, I suppose that in order to dis/agree on this, we'd need to figure our who the "casual listener" is, and to be honest, I'm not sure whether that is a worthwhile effort.
The only other thing I would say is that this is not simply a discussion of semantics. Yes, there are a lot of really boring discussions going on out there about what is and is not punk. Comments like bickle's (and sp's second comment) are just reactionary on an emotional level - this doesn't mean they should be discounted necessarily, but they definitely aren't helpful in trying to figure out why some people (myself included) might get a little aggravated when a band like the Test Icicles is described as "hardcore".
The issue here, for me, is that the cooptation/commodification of grassroots cultural movements like punk (and hardcore as a offshoot of punk) is really rampant these days. Don't get me wrong, Gothamist writing a review about some kids in a band is not the same thing as the hype surrounding a new Blink-182 release. To the contrary, it's awesome that people are reviewing bands that are making the rounds, playing shows, trying to get people excited, etc.
Nevertheless, I think that it's important to realize that not everybody is getting snarky about which band gets assigned to which sub-genre. Rather, applying labels like "hardcore" in a seemingly haphazard or inaccurate way suggests (perhaps misleadingly) that the writer is involved in the process of diluting those terms, those movements, into something less meaningful.
The obvious response is that I'm taking one music review WAY to seriously, but since the usage seems to have ruffled some feathers, I thought it was worth discussing.
In terms of the disclaimer; I just thought it was funny that once somebody is removed from Gothamist's rhetorical Royal We, that person automatically warrented a disclaimer.
you people are so hardcore! hardcore blogging! hardcore debating! i just achieved orgasm. I think these people were just talking about the musical miscategorization, not about culture in general. It's like confusing gangster rap with German polka. They're separate genres.
"Yuppie-ist wouldn't know hardcore if it smacked them upside the face. Let's be fair; this is not a hardcore-themed blog."
Sad.