From the basement toilets you can hear the barman shaking cocktails upstairs. Why this building is so empty tonight, when JD Samson of Le Tigre is soon to play inches away from your disturbing face, is a mystery of McIntyre proportions, but the fact that the anti-fun squad are staying home works weirdly well with Jemma Roper‘s spooked-out meanderings. Buffalo’s Lynchian red curtain plushness is the perfect surroundings for songs that cook up spooky thrills with little more than vocals and scratchy electric guitar. Starting with a reclaimed, ghostly version of ‘In A Fit Of Something’, an old song from former band Sammo Hung, Roper’s short set is great like leftover Halloween sweets – quiet and disarming, desolate and sexy, and fills the room with swoon.
Strictly speaking it’s hard for a venue to fully exude a Lynchian vibe when there’s a big painting of arses and beards behind the stage, but MEN‘s backdrop (plus cut-from-the-same-cloth outfits) gives plenty indication where they’re coming from: undeniable art cool with a healthy dose of inclusive grinning essentially. Musically the agitated elements of Le Tigre’s eternal protest have been boiled down into sleeker and slinkier parts – sampled beats that glide and throb, super fine guitar needling and reedy keyboard noises all strut towards choruses that float out of equally nonchalant build up play. There are obscene hand gestures to go with the superior electropop too: ‘Credit Card Babies’ has some fine, uh, fingerwork from Samson and a delirious strut to match her cheeky grin. Indeed, MEN seem madly happy to be playing a cold November Buffalo in front of 30 (very vocal) people but it’s this bare faced, actually-you’re-really-a-nice-person element to them that overrides all their faultless, weirdly perfect tunes. For all that ‘Off Our Backs’ punches and jerks beautifully, or ‘Simultaeneously’ wrings pathos from quiet guitar chimes, it’s the way-happy crowd at the end, lining up for merch and hugs, saying you changed my life, that wipes out any crappy under attendance figures. If you don’t come next time though, I’ll shit in your bed.
