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Les Savy Fav: After The Balls Drop |
Contributed By: The Messiah
Created On: Friday, 02 May 2008
Hits: 66
 After The Balls Drop And all the while, as unsuspecting audience members are smothered in his sweaty embrace, the band goes about their business in a professional, kick-ass manner. Not many live experiences available top seeing Les Savy Fav. Unfortunately, the things that make their live show so great are the same things that make releasing a Les Savy Fav live album a dodgy proposition. That said, After the Balls Drop manages to make the most of these potential shortcomings, offering listeners a charming, warts-and-all portrait of the group.
The group gets a second wind midway through the set (conveniently enough, around the time Harrington gets the crowd going by asking if they're fading or fired up-- you can guess what won out). LSF gleefully rip through "The Year Before the Year 2000" and "The Lowest Bitter" (with the latter featuring Harrington on kazoo), then stretches out the seething intro for "Who Rocks the Party" (from The Cat & The Cobra). This gives way to "Tim's Speech", a 15-minute track which is actually a seven-minute version of "Rome" (from the EP of the same name) and eight superfluous minutes of the crowd calling for an encore, along with a brief speech from Harrington-- after the band returns to the stage-- concerning the issues of trust and an audience member using his sister's ID to get into the show.
What follows the speech is the real reason to drop some cash on this set-- five enthusiastic covers of variable quality that bring the show home. The versions of Creedence Clearwater Revival ("Hey Tonight") and the Misfits ("Astro Zombies") are the best of the bunch, though the group's run through the chosen Pixies ("Debaser") and Nirvana ("Sliver") tracks are also fun. Their ramshackle campfire version of Love's "Everybody's Gotta Live" is the perfect closer for a set that ultimately sounds less like a show held at a legitimate concert venue and more like the sort of raucous hoe-down you'd find at a house party.
 
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