Gene Loves Jezebel: A 'Gorgeous" show

Gene Loves Jezebel, Flesh for Lulu. Savor those names. We seem to be in a world where love might consume us alive. These are British pop bands, and the kids in black who like them here might just be omens that the enervation of modern Britain lies in our future, too. Flesh for Lulu: "We crash together/helpless at the wheel." 

Or maybe forget Flesh for Lulu, because at the Universal Amphitheater on Saturday night; their set was sludge; their lead singer, Nick Marsh, looked far too pleased with himself (though give him credit - he can do the twist). Even not half bad jumpy songs from their current album - "I Go Crazy," maybe, or "Postcard From Paradise" - didn't move. One weird symptom; the drummer didn't even begin to propel the band; rhythmic impulse, such as there was, came from the bass. 

But Gene Loves Jezebel was something else. They play real music, songs you can tell apart without an electron microscope, songs like "Gorgeous," where half the time instead of singing the title word they just smiled and let their fans pick up the melody and sing in their place. 

Oh, and don't they put on a show. Their set began with drums emerging from a colored mist, with the drummer sitting among them like a pilot at the controls of a spaceship bizarrely built from metallic giant ants. Then there were the rhythm guitarist and half-time lead singer with candy orange-red hair and his twin brother the ambiguous blond who stripped. And there was the moment when only the lead guitarist and the half-invisible drummer remained on stage everyone else jammed at the top of a runway, except the stripping blond, who'd collapsed from the androgyny of it all. 

Every time he shook his thing, little girls in the audience shrieked. Not that he seemed to pose any threat to them. Once, though, over and over, he moaned "I want an L.A. woman:" Then he opened depths of contradictory degradation far more shocking than anything suggested by his no-girls-allowed sex play with his brother and the other guys in the band. 

High point: "Stephen," a love ballad from an early album, haunting in its simplicity. Superior sound system: Details in the music really came through. Gene Loves Jezebel sings almost in a swoon: "My eyes are tired as I sit and wait for the waking hours." In the falling darkness, imagination seems to be their escape. 

Previous Article

Home

Next Article