A British Invasion (of Sorts) in Detroit: Foals, The Teenagers, Wednesday, April 30

Wednesday nights aren’t too bad if you can spend them running around town to catch international touring bands who have serendipitously converged upon a single city limit–your city limit–on the same night. Sure, you have two more days of work before the weekend, and that big meeting tomorrow morning, and you know you’re going to drink a bit too much and feel crummy all day long, but you’ve got Thursday to recover, and don’t you need some release after three grueling days of paper pushing and mindless emailing at your job?

And how often do three popular British acts–in this case, Foals, The Teenagers (England via Paris), and Kate Nash–come through Detroit on the same night? The answer lies somewhere between “very seldom” and “never once before.” That’s almost 3,800 miles, although I think it is a lot shorter if you measure by meters. They should’ve carpooled. Sadly, I only made two shows. Sorry Katie. I totally fell for Lily Allen a couple of years ago and, when it comes to bubble-gum pop with hints of ‘tude from a cute British doll, I pretty much become the gooey lovesick mess of my pubescent yore, but yours was the most expensive show and a man’s gotta draw the line somewheres.

The agenda: Catch my Detroit pals Millions of Brazilians opening at Alvin’s, then to the Magic Stick for The Teenagers, then back to Alvin’s for Foals.

I’m friends with Millions of Brazilians and was thrilled that they got to play with Foals, but for purposes of objectivity, I’ll let you listen for yourself instead of lauding their talent with werds.

Millions were followed by the Ruby Suns, who I heard were great, but I needed to get to the Magic Stick for The Teenagers. I was worried that I wouldn’t catch the break I needed and that The Teenagers would play at the same time as Foals. I called the Magic Stick three times to try to nail my timing. Here’s basically how the first two calls went:

Me: “Hi. What time do Teenagers go on?”
Someone: “Dude, uh, mmm, I don’t know man. Uh, there’s a DJ or something.”
Me: “Is the DJ on now?”
Someone [condescendingly]: “Umm, he’s a DJ. Yeah, he, um, plays when the band’s not playing, dude.”
Me: “Well, has the first band played yet?”
Someone: “Um, I don’t…the doors opened late tonight.”

Here’s almost exactly how the third call went:

Me: “Hi. When do Teenagers go on?”
Someone else: “GOD DAMN IT! The headliner ALWAYS goes on at 11:00 on the weekday. ALWAYS! Everyone knows that!”
Me: “K, bye”

So I arrived at the Magic Stick at 11:28 to see The Teenagers’ final two songs. There were only about sixty people there, mostly (could you have guessed it?) American Apparel-appareled teenage girls. The Teenagers, who are actually French twenty-somethings who live in England, played as if they were new at this, and I guess they are. But they didn’t disappoint. They played sloppy and three men singing in unison at speaking pitch isn’t the most pleasant thing to hear, but they did know how to get a bunch of girls really, really excited (or shall I say “excited”). Czech it:

After “Homecoming,” The Teenagers thanked the crowd and left for backstage. That’s when something weird happened: none of the 18 year olds in the audience clapped for an encore. Usually, I save my palms and voice because I can always rely on others to clap the requisite volume to get the performers back on stage, but these kids just kind of stood around, waiting for music to just magically start happening again. And it did, in the form of the DJ breaking the awkward silence and discomfort, to which the teenies started back into action, a little bumpin’ here, a bit of grinding there.

A few members of the band came back on stage to pick up their gear and I got the ear of the guitarist to ask him why they didn’t encore. He said, “Um, we already played all the songs we know.”

Got back to Alvin’s to find that most of the earlier crowd stuck around and had consumed considerably more alcohol. Foals began shortly after I arrived. Lead singer and guitarist Yannis Philippakis sets his mic stand at center stage, but facing stage right, so that the audience sees him in profile. It’s not a bad idea if you want to be more visible to the audience–no pesky stands blocking the view–and oddly enough, it felt like there was less of a barrier between the band and the crowd as a result.

Between songs, Philippakis would say a few things to the crowd–the standard fare. Otherwise, there wasn’t any direct interaction with the crowd, the band’s eyes steadfastly looking down at the floor in concentration or rolled up into their eyelids in exstasy. The performance carried an intensity that felt less like they were playing for 40 people in a dark Detroit bar at 1am and more like they were playing for ten thousand in the late afternoon at Glastonbury.

After warming up on a couple of mild-paced songs, “Cassius” got everybody off their bar stools and right in front of the stage. This is the deadliest song of 2008, an adrenaline burst of prickly, stabbing guitars. Their frenetic energy filled the crowd with every subsequent song. “Olympic Airways,” “Electric Bloom,” one after another fist-pumping, stomp-inducing masterpiece. “Two Steps, Twice” is when I kind of lost myself, jumping up and down and smacking my hands on the stage, chanting the lyrics with the band and everyone else. It was like being at a revival, with people speaking in tongues, flailing all about as if electrocuted, obeying the will of the beat and the rhythm. Foals ended with “Balloons” and raised the energy to fever pitch. Guitarist Jimmy Smith cut his hand on his strings, leaving a small puddle of blood on the stage behind.

Afterward I was exhausted, a little sore, a tad drunk, and exhilarated. Not bad for a Wednesday night.

Foals video to come….

A big thanks to Chris Brown for The Teenagers video and Natalie for the Foals vids (I hope to be coming soon).