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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 28 February 2008

Wolf cries in a wedding dress

REVIEW
LE SAVVY FAV
London Astoria

IT takes a strong man to rise above base insults and crude criticisms.
But I’m weak, so sod it. Future of the Left – the support act to New York art-rockers Les Savy Fav at their recent Astoria gig – are rubbish. Screeching, incoherent, two-chord offal. The only future this Welsh three-piece are guaranteed is the bargain singles bin in an Abergavenny Oxfam.
And yet, watching them (“listening” is too kind a word) made me start to wonder. Why are Les Savy Fav any better? On paper, they’re very similar bands: same angular guitars, same thrown-out, rap-inflected vocals. Maybe they’re rubbish too. Maybe they’ve always been rubbish.
The entrance of Fav frontman Tim Harrington goes some way to explaining the rift in quality.
His shoes arrive at the gig a minute before he does, wearing knee-high riding boots and a Phantom of the Opera mask.
It’s not the props that make Harrington magnetic, it’s his total lack of decorum. Within the first few bars of set opener, Where the Wolves Are, he’s already thrown himself into the baying crowd with complete abandon. Hands tear the mask from his face and snatch the mic. Harrington elicits wolf howls from the capacity crowd.
“Gosh, it’s really crowded in here,” he comments, with child-like innocence.
Then he clambers back on stage to hump the speakers, flagellate himself and parade around in a pretty white wedding dress.
While Harrington’s grandstanding excites, it’s the songs – Peggy Lee, One Way Widow and The Sweat Descends to name a few – that ensure these veteran rockers need no support. Future who?
SIMON WROE

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