Mates of State + DeHawney Troof + Saturday Looks Good to Me

But She Could Play the Yamaha Just Like Ringing a Bell Saturday Looks Good to Me is part of a burgeoning crop of Detroit bands who seek to combine the city’s two great musical traditions: the Motown R&B scene and the MC5/Stooges “garage” rock scene. The result is a sound that retains ridiculous amounts of soul while still allowing for some dirty, white-hot guitar solos. Strangely, their music also ends up sounding Californian enough to let the Brian Wilson comparisons fly. Tall, ultra-thin guitarist/vocalist Fred Thomas has great stage presence, stomping his long legs around while playing each chord as if it were the most amazing guitar-work ever seen. Part-time vocalist Erika Hoffman, decked out in her cute zigzag red skirt and black knee-highs, adds an extra layer of summer-fun to the band’s sound, although, at this show at least, her mic needed to be turned up (or something else needed to be done to keep Thomas’ guitar from completely drowning her out). Thomas, the band’s sole songwriter, could easily handle all of the vocals himself, but trading off with Hoffman is a wise choice, since her one-woman Supremes act saves the band from the monotony that enslaves so many similar artists. DeHawney Troof just begs to have an entire article written on him, though his set was not nearly as good as either of the other bands. The most obvious comparison is to Andrew WK, if only based on his permanent sugar-high and the divisive nature of his is-he-being-ironic-or-not routine. Basically, DeHawney Troof is an eighteen-year-old from California, and he plays a ten-minute set that consists of him rapping/screaming along with his laptop while wearing almost nothing. He has two separate songs that are both, in his words, “about how I fucking hate cops.” His act is completely insane and completely inane, and would become seriously annoying if it were longer. Thank God, then, that DeHawney Troof is a true opening act, whose main function was to fire up the crowd, one way or another. At this he undeniably succeeded, jumping around the stage and in the crowd, writhing Madonna-like on the floor, and embracing several clearly frightened members of the audience. He left the stage leading the crowd in a chant of the other bands’ names: “Saturday Looks Good to Me!” “Mates of Fucking State!” over and over. Mates of (Fucking) State consists of husband-and-wife team Kori Gardner (vocals/organ) and Jason Hammel (vocals/drums), who have toured obsessively over the last five-odd years, releasing three full-length albums, including the just-released Team Boo (Polyvinyl). Team Boo is barely two weeks old, so I was surprised to find out that many of the fans at the Abbey Pub had no problem singing along to every song Mates of State played. And play them they did. The set was comprised of most of the tracks from Team Boo, accompanied by the stronger cuts off 2002’s brilliant, but subdued Our Constant Concern, and the band’s catchy (but less polished) debut, My Solo Project. At this point in Gardner and Hammel’s career, this is an ideal set list, allowing for consistency while still changing it up from time to time. During the concert’s best stretch, the Mates played their two amazing side-one-track-ones (Team Boo‘s “Ha Ha” and Our Constant Concern‘s “Hoarding It for Home”) back-to-back. “Ha Ha” is the most maniacal song they’ve recorded. Gardner’s organ sounds like a broken-down carnival ride, slowing spinning out of control before the band’s trademark boy-girl harmonies pull the song jarringly back in. “Ha Ha” is such a rocker that the Abraham Benrubi look-alike in the front row, who sang his heart out all night, was able to deliver some pretty righteous head banging. “Hoarding It for Home”, the perfect heading-out-on-the-road song on record, became the perfect cathartic sing-along live. Gardner and Hammel’s harmonies, which can sound a little screechy at times on record, are absolutely perfect live, coming across almost as a single voice, that during their multi-part songs often breaks apart, but always comes back together for a madly catchy conclusion. Much has been written about Mates of State as a married band. Most commentators find this either fun and endearing or unbearably cutesy, then continue to judge their music accordingly. The cuteness is certainly there, what with the winks, the asides, and Gardner continually bending down to catch a glimpse of Hammel through the mess of equipment on stage. But what struck me most about the couple was not how “cute” they looked, but just how fucking cool they looked. Kori Gardner will certainly go down in history for inventing the first cool rock-star moves for the organ, jumping, kicking and bending with sheer rock ‘n roll abandon. And as for Hammel, well, I think we all know that there’s nothing cooler than a drummer who sings. The concert ended with Gardner paying tribute to DeHawney Troof, rockin’ the crowd from side-to-side before jumping down among them, bringing it home for the kids who sang their hearts out all night. Mates of Fucking State. They are one of those rare, rare bands that justify the existence of concert reviewers like me. For many bands, if you’ve heard their albums, you’ve seen their live shows (minus a few rock-star dance moves). But Mates of State is a case where I can legitimately say without exaggeration: if you haven’t heard Mates of State live, then you haven’t heard Mates of State.