Rock Out With(out) Your Cock Out

In praise of club magic

In less than a week, I just had the good fortune to catch two shows that were diametrically opposed to each other on the presentation scale: Mitski and The Kills.

Last night was my third time bearing witness to the alchemic frisson that is a live show from The Kills. Equipped with just a couple of guitars, a couple of mics, and sampling equipment, Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart headlined the hell out of a Webster Hall packed house and a raucous good time was had by all.

If you’ve never heard The Kills they can be best described as indie electro garage but even those words are stupid. Sure, there are snarly guitars and infectious riffs scaffolding traditional song structures coated with Mosshart’s honey voice, but they deliver it all a swagger akin to old school, balls to the wall, rock ‘n roll guts, grit, and glory. They pull no punches when writing songs about depression, addiction, places they love, and people they lust. They get that raw honest expression is messy and don’t shirk from the reverb of it all.

Touring in support of their latest album God Games, The Kills came to give the people what they want, letting rip a set well balanced with God Games songs (“You Taste Like New York", “LA Hex”) and old bangers (“URA Fever”, “Tape Song,” “Black Balloon”). Mosshart is a fire front woman, a banshee unleashed by every note. I love her throaty voice, her skinny jeans on skinny legs, and her unabashed head-banging and free dancing in contrast to Hince’s cool customer consumed with controlling his instrument.

You know the witchy adage, as is above, so is below? I often find as was onstage, so was in the crowd to be true. Mosshart and Hince always seem to be having such a good time, everyone in the crowd can’t help but follow suit.

Last Friday, My younger and I caught Mitski at Radio City Music Hall. As Taylor Swift proclaims to fuck with eras, Mitski likes fucking with various genres of music as kind of a sonic challenge. Her last album, Laurel Hell, was the perfect ‘80s album made in the ‘20s. She’d clearly done her share of morning meditations to the Sirius XM First Wave catalog because there were flecks of synth and guitar weaving in and out of that perfect 3:30 song structure of verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus that took me all the way the fuck back. It was a perfectly executed vision for one great song after another.

Like Mosshart, Mitski knows her job with a live show is to embody her music and serve it to her people. Where Mosshart is freely feral and rapturously possessed with joy by the sounds she’s making, Mitski is way more of a deliberate performer. She appeared on a circular raised stage, flanked by competent folk musicians on either side (she didn’t thank them during the encore, that always bugs me). Her smooth voice was strong and her signature interpretive dance moves delicately intact. Dedicating her latest album to a folk-ish, country-ish sound, her robust set of songs old and new were all infused with the slide guitar treatment.

Thematically, her work is predominantly about love, lust, and longing, and the dark, liminal spaces betwixt and between we can rarely find words to define. In doing so she’s a true introspective poet, leaving much for her fans to pore over and analyze. Her newest record, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We, carries a far more somber and contemplative tone in the vein of Beck’s Sea Change, and her live show was reflective of this subdued choice.

Lyrically, Mitski does this thing where she starts with the mundane and follows it to the profound. I bring you exhibit A, the last verse of “Bug Like An Angel”:

When I’m bent over/Wishing it was over/Making all variety of vows I’ll never keep/I try to remember/The wrath of the devil/Was also given him by God

I mean…

Every concert has a vibe and this Mitski show was a study in Gen Z piety. Her fans clung to her every softly sung word, every delicate gesture she made. Never, ever in my very, very long concert-going career have I witnessed such a dead, pin drop silence between songs amid such a young audience. The last time I heard this depth of nothing was after a tragically shocking scene in an Audra McDonald play. It was so strange. Weren’t concerts supposed to be fun, social gatherings? Why were we taking ourselves so seriously? There was this feeling you’d be cancelled or doxxed if you spoke out of turn but perhaps it was just pure reverence and respect for the art and the artist.

On loving the club

Everyone their version of a sacred space. Some consider it their bed; some find standing on grass, swimming in water, or gazing at the sky; others may favor communal spaces of worship.

Me? Yeah, sure with the water and the sky and bed, but I find it when I immerse myself in art—especially live music. The club is one of my natural habitats. The smell of beer (even though I don’t drink anymore); the thrum of crowds commiserating over sounds; the lewks folks assemble for a night on the town; the sense that a majestic immersive experience is about to consume your senses—even after decades, taking it all in still gives me a tingle.

Once you work in a club for any period of time, you develop and hone certain skillsets that never get rusty. After all these years, I can still assess in a glance who might be too drunk to stand next to for the next hours, or weave my way through the thickest of crowds and back at breakneck speed to pee before my least favorite song of the set is over. Whilst marveling over the impressive glow up Webster Hall seems to have had since I last set foot in there, an unwelcome thought I never before allowed myself to think scrolled into my consciousness like an inhumane headline: How much longer can I keep doing this? Can I keep this up for another 20 years?

To quote The Kills: Time ain’t gonna cure you honey/Time don’t give a shit/Time ain’t gonna cure you honey/Time’s just gonna hit on you.

I did something I never ever want to do (because society is doing it to me plenty, thanks so much) which was regurgitate bullshit ageist rhetoric to myself. EW.

Having fully grossed myself out, I came out of the stall, went back to my perch on the balcony, and took a good look around. By no means in hell was I the oldest person at The Kills (like I was at Mitski). And by no means in hell could I imagine what my life would look like without this particular brand of joy. As long as I have two working legs, my 5’ 1” ass will be at the club, standing somewhere around you, vying for an angle to bear witness to the magic show on stage.

As long as this magic exists, I have someplace to be.

Watch The Traitors Yet?

This TV magic that awaits you there.

What the hell are you waiting for? Let me know if you’re on the train yet in the comments!

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That’s it for now, cats ‘n kittens! Until next week…

xx