…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, The Blood
Brothers
Thursday, Nov. 30
Henry Fonda Theater
If you’d like to picture the Blood Brothers and …And You
Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead show, think of a sedimentary
layer containing all sorts of fossilized human bones and odd-sized
uranium blow-up dolls. Not eclectic enough? Try a birthday cake
with multiple layers of rainbow delight and pouty lips pressed open
with razor blades.
Such is the musical styling of the post-punk, self-immolating
scream fest the Blood Brothers bring with them.
Though this musical style of ADD irreverence seemed on a par
with the eclectic audience, it was another vibe, a contradiction in
the crowd that stood out as inharmonious from the very beginning,
that proved wide-ranging appeal can be just as much an invitation
to cavemen drawn to sensations of vibrations and sweat.
Not that bleached blonde lead singer Jordan Billie didn’t
attract the usual crystal meth crowd, obviously the first to flock
to his gyrating pelvis and passionately outstretched hand.
It was the oddity of this background in contrast to the other
attendees that seemed not quite right: bearded patrons drawn to the
renaissance whimsy of Trail of Dead, exoskeleton-hoodie-wearing
husky girls wondering what a real fractured vertebra looks like,
along with the 30-something guys who are only kept alive in their
lonesomeness by $5 beers and preteens who look almost ready for the
MySpace auction block.
More obvious than these however, were two fine young gentlemen
who immediately gained every patron’s attention. For the
purpose of this piece, we’ll call them Angry Guy No. 1 and
Angry Guy No. 2.
While Billie and his more quietly accented partner Johnny
Whitney traded screams about “pollinating the flowers of
fire” and “sugar as birth bait,” the Angry Guys
were pollinating their own flowers of misguided and wholeheartedly
aggressive passion.
It seems that while Angry Guy No. 1 was romping around the pit
like the missing link, probably trying to gain his balance as a
Homo sapien, he “accidentally” grabbed Angry Guy No. 2
in a completely heterosexual embrace of fury and threw him to the
floor.
But in watching these two fine Herculean specimens face off,
something along the lines of the miraculous happened; they hugged
in a sort of
yeah-touch-me-but-don’t-let-anyone-see-us-actually-make-contact
kind of way. Very candid indeed.
Not only did this open display of camaraderie warm the wet and
sinewy cockles of the crowd’s collective heart, but it also
inspired other kids who have always wondered what it’s like
to actually dance to music to start erratically moving.
A girl drowning in an oversized rave hoodie and unashamed of
public enthusiasm tried to move toward the stage, but she was stuck
down by an angry guy not quite sympathetic to the notion of
actually moving to music.
It is in this action and reaction that the eclectic attendees
get the release they paid for.
As a show witnessed for sheer morbid curiosity, the hour of
voyeurism was well worth the $30 admission price, if only to watch
the confusion of angry kids still trying to pollinate their own
flowers of fire.