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Go See Les Savy Fav, It’s Electrique

Providence music scene inevitably creates a saturation of production. In the late ‘90s, this crisis reached its apex. Bands were forced to move to foreign lands in the ever-lasting search for new markets. Brooklyn proved to be a fertile ground for the exploitation of land, labor, and hipsters.

Les Savy Fav went to RISD. Then they eagerly answered the call of imperialism and set up an enclave in Williamsburg. According to Syd Barret, bassist and colonial administrator, “we would have stayed. New York just offered us more opportunity in the subjects we studied at RISD.”

The story from there is classic: opportunity, exploitation, post-punk dance party, wealth extraction, and so on. Tim Harrington sings with a beard that isn’t just for Winter. Les Savy Fav appears at the Met for two nights on March 21 and 22 to present the findings of their imperialist project. This will include a financial report on the economic viability of Brooklyn and the periphery, the status of the advancement of the native population, and a display of tribal music. (False.)

Two nights in a row, though? A dance party is one thing, a two-night stand is something else entirely. So Syd explains: “The Met Café asked us to do two nights instead of one night at Lupo’s.” All beards withstanding, Les Savy Fav deserves two nights. While a lot of bands produce one good record only to disappear, or reproduce the same record over and over again, Les Savy Fav has produced three excellent LPs, one EP, and a handful of 7” records. The president of RISD calls them “true innovators, beacons of light in the tunnel of darkness that is my life.” (This is a fabrication.)

Bands tour to support material production. Les Savy Fav has records, but tours mainly to exhibit material culled from their imperialist project. While in Brooklyn they fully realized the value of transforming the Fordist homogeneity of the Providence noise-rock scene into a regiment of flexible production manifest in a series of 7” records meant to fit the desires of the individuated consumer. Number seven arrives this April. Eventually, these records will be collected and printed on compact disc.

Compact discs are for listening, Les Savy Fav shows are for resisting alienation. It’s a long tradition. Syd remembers that, “Years ago when we went to RISD we had a party called ‘Spring Bunny Love’ the weekend before spring break. It was the best time to have a dance party.” Sounds enticing, maybe enough to sacrifice a weekend of heavy drinking in the Adirondacks.

But the question of repatriation remains. Will Les Savy Fav ever come back, or have they found their place as settlers? Apparently, “Brooklyn has many secrets” that have yet to be explored. And Syd says the new world order will look like “a resident in the White House.”

Gesticulating wildly to spoken word over what critics call “angular” guitar riffs is the new cool, and Les Savy Fav is the new imperialism, and the new imperialism is the name of a record by non-seminal hardcore band 400 Years, and NME might call Les Savy Fav “the best of the post-Strokes wave of New York bands” if they knew what they were talking about. But they don’t…it’s reification, man.

—Alex Provan

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