Cut your hair! Tuck your shirt in! Grow your hair! It’s still considered pretty uncool to have put much effort into playing a gig. Too much forethought risks making it into a ‘performance’ and moving further away from authenticity and other notions that cock-brained pre-death men care about. Super Cute Voices’ Undertone set involves matching outfits, synchronized dance moves, costume changes and pulling funny faces at the crowd, and the whole thing is as fantastic and unexpected as finding a golden robot head buried in your garden. They put the art into artifice and the ill into fucking brilliant. Even on cranky, malfunctioning equipment they fizz harder than 50 indie bands put together, and they need someone to bring out action figures of each of the three members (which would themselves be better than 50 indie bands put together). It’s pop music: let’s get carried away.
Well, sort of pop music. Close your eyes and you’ll hear robosex deviants like Devo and (especially) Polysics, but also the melodic kitchen sink patter of bands like Squeeze (and singer Stuart does a fine Mike-the-piano-player-from-Madness gurning grimace). It’s a squalid and oddly British sensibility that fits rather well with cheap trebly guitars and keyboards one finger press away from falling apart, and gives their cyborg gleam an inclusive and more lovable feel. Course, it’s hard not to feel included when one song involves the bassist strapping on a motorcycle helmet and handing the audience a foam baseball bat with which to hit him on the head. You don’t get that with Man Without Country. Each member is perfect: tall goofball on bass, dreamboat wideboy frontman on guitar, Anime pixie lady literally karate chopping wobbly keyboards. Black and yellow jackets and heavy shades give way to synchronized unzipping and initialized T-shirts give way to shonky grins and dazed happiness. They play for waaay too long but I don’t care. Super Cute Voices are cartoons you can hug, neon balm for crappy grey days. In earmuffs and headset mics. Seethemseethemseethem.
