Art Brut

Usually the live side of a rock band is marked by a dirty sound and performances brimming with energy, flaws and all, in the early stages of the band's career, only to gain in cleanliness and precision as the years go by. Art Brut, however, have never been a band like any other, not so much because they lack clear points of reference, but because they've managed to work through those references and make them interact in a way that has made them instantly recognisable ever since their dazzling 2005 debut "Bang Bang Rock & Roll". The razor-sharp Seventies punk-rock riffs, the irony and lightness typical of Britpop, and that way of declaiming rather than singing that has often led people to compare Eddie Argos to Mark E. Smith, have for five years now been the trademark of a band that has nonetheless managed to carve out its own world within today's vast indie-rock landscape: a world where fans step in and immediately feel at home, above all because they know it's something different from everything else, and reproducible by no one but this quintet.

From this point of view, Argos and co.'s shows have always been reassuring, in the sense that it was easy for fans to find the same world present on record without much effort. For those, on the other hand, who stumbled upon their live shows without knowing the band, the frontman's extraordinary ability to build an intensely complicit rapport with the audience inevitably served as a gateway into that world, from which, once you were in, it was practically impossible to leave. Something, however, is changing following the release of the third album "Art Brut Vs. Satan", at least judging by the last two Italian appearances, namely the one under discussion here and the previous date at the Magnolia last May 21st: on both occasions, in fact, the band presented themselves to the audience in a much more lo-fi guise, both in terms of sound, dirty and weighted in favour of the rhythm section rather than the voice and guitars, and in terms of performance, riddled with imprecisions, so that the sounds, which were never crystal-clear to begin with, often blur into one another, to the benefit of an overall energy that showcases the band's punk attitude more than ever before.

And in terms of the rapport with the audience too, Argos is less accommodating than in the past, because whereas before his between-song remarks were delivered in a deliberately slow and understandable way for as many non-native English speakers as possible, now these same digressions are delivered over the music and at a speed and with a pronunciation that make them practically incomprehensible to anyone without a strong command of English.

It might not be a fully conscious choice, but the desire to get a certain kind of message across to their audience is evident nonetheless, one that on the latest album is entrusted to the song "Slap Dash For No Cash": namely, that the best sound is one in which something isn't quite right, so let's stop wanting to all sound like U2. Either way, it's all part of the Art Brut world, and so those already inside it can't help but remain satisfied despite these differences from past shows: people keep showering the band with applause and singalongs, and Eddie Argos is more and more the master of his audience, from start to finish.

Here in Trescore, the setlist was dominated precisely by that debut album, from which every track was played except "Move To L.A.", though there was no shortage of cuts from the two following records. They kicked off with the debut's own title track, and almost immediately came "Good Weekend", which in the past used to be used as the grand finale instead; in the first part of the show the songs were evenly spread across the three albums, but then, as mentioned, the debut began to take over, even if the closing number was, as on the previous occasion, "Post Soothing Out", a track taken from the 2007 second album "It's A Bit Complicated".

From a purely visual standpoint, Art Brut were their usual selves, with the two guitarists roaming widely around the stage and Argos rousing the crowd and treating everyone to his customary walkabout among the audience during "Modern Art".

A fine evening overall, one that showed how a band can find its own path without necessarily having to offer something totally new: all it takes is knowing how to build your own world out of the material you've chosen to work with.

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