Box Elders - Bardens Boudoir, London 30/11/09
3/5
By: Steve Rose
These days everybody likes bands that have nice neat MySpace pages. If they've never played a show, that’s even better. I have never been on www.myspace.com/boxelders,but I would hazard a guess that their MySpace page is a total mess. With wrong links and silly in jokes coming out of its every orifice. For some reason, it seems like everybody in the musical universe, that isn't spending their days talking about Floridian Weezer worshipping Surfer Blood is passing time bigging up; Sh*thole (Nabraska) based lo-fi-surf-punk-whatever-blah-blah-blah (when will the no-fi-whatever-wave phenomenon end?). Does the hype surrounding this new hipster pin-up overshadow the reality? Is it another case of 'Horrors or Hunx and His Punx-esque' style over substance? Or will they be the new Trashmen, with or without context?
On a wet Thursday night, with all the free booze at galleries having been sucked dry, this three-piece named after a Pavement song are actually a more than welcome ray of sunshine; in the cold heart of our dark English winter. They appear like some hilarious, half baked Kevin Smith characters; with a particularly in-your-face cocktail of bare chests, Hawaiian shirts, and maniacal, demoniacal and seraphical grins. And you know that conversely to their appearances - they are loathing the British weather. In spite of the current climates similarities to Miroslaw Balka's latest contemporary art offering (How it is) at the Tate Modern, Box Elders do live up to the tidal wave of hype which has been forced upon them. They are fun, faultless and they make you want to take up surfing, be a beach bum and move to Honolulu for the rest of your futile existence.
As they blast through a rawcus twenty five minute party-set (after pretty great twenty-minuters from Manchester/London, and Brighton outfits, Mazes and The Sticks) it's plain to see why this band are being name dropped by the various stalwarts, of the international 'i heart lo-fi' fan club. The angelic vocal harmonies, perpetually rolling bass lines, erratic stand-up drummer, and shredding surf licks Hank Mc Spank Marvin would be proud of - tick all the metaphorical boxes. These guys would clearly come under the 'waster', 'drop-out' and 'total dude' category in your organised by genre record collection, and their band is better than most names dropped by people who listen to bands that don't even exist yet. However the new Pavement...they are not. Ask me in ten years time...No wait! Ask me next year and see if I remember who Box Elders are...Or what a post-ironic-Brooklyn/Dalston-bro-fi surf punk album recorded through a VHS recorder is?
Artists in this article: Box Elders
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