Pretty Girls Make Graves + Giant Drag

Pretty Girls Make Graves + Giant Drag

Remember that girl in your kindergarten class who was smaller then all the other kids, wore funny clothes, and had really long hair that covered her eyes? She seemed shy, but you got the sense that while she was in the corner playing weird games by herself, there was a whole lot of mischief going on. Imagine that girl at 24, taller but still tiny, out of her shell, and playing songs reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine and the Breeders. Add a boy in the back who doesn’t talk much but provides keys and drums (at the same time), and you have Giant Drag.


Giant Drag
multiple songs: MySpace

At Irving Plaza, the duo — Annie Hardy and Micah Calabrese — hammered through songs filled with fuzzy guitars, playful melodies, and defined by a sense of both irony and perversion. Their songs may not be terribly complex, but they nonetheless propel the band into the impressive ranks of those who have managed to sound complete with only two members (bands like Suicide, the Kills, the White Stripes, and, uh, Steely Dan). Giant Drag’s set offered a heavy helping from last year’s Hearts and Unicorns, including “This Isn’t It” and “YFLMD”, as well the dreamy new “Swan Song.” Sandwiched in the middle was a cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” which Hardy claims to have written herself about an affair at the age of eight with Isaak (who is 24 years her senior). I’m a closeted Chris Issak fan, but Giant Drag’s haunting, hypnotic version won me over. Before launching into their last song, Hardy asked if anyone knew what time the Magnolia Bakery closed. An audience member answered, shouting “10:35.” She replied, “then I gotta get the fuck out of here!” and launched quickly into “Kevin Is Gay”, a ridiculously catchy tune which may or may not be mean spirited. By the time she left the stage, I was convinced that this Annie Hardy character is my soul mate. Sarcasm, inappropriate humor, and sexual references? A love of baked goods and songs about boys being totally gay? This stuff is right up my alley. You know, right where headliners Pretty Girls Make Graves used to be. To them, I ask the same thing they asked me on their first record: “Do you remember what the music meant?” I wonder if they shouldn’t also take some time to ponder the question. I say this with love. After all, I am a big fan of the band — this marked the third time I’ve seen them live. My dissatisfaction stems from my disappointment in the recently released Elan Vital, a record drastically different from those in their back catalog. While some might argue that it’s a further exploration of the new sounds introduced in 2003’s near-perfect The New Romance, these people fail to notice that the result neglects the essence of what made the band so loveable in the first place. Almost gone are the catchy, addictive anthems, the gritty post-punk sound, and the angsty, bittersweet lyrics that seemed ripped from my high-school journals.


Pretty Girls Make Graves
multiple songs: MySpace

The new sound is less hardcore, more manufactured, and contains strange elements that seem awkward and out of place (in my opinion the only band that can pull off songs about pirates and accordions is the Decemberists). Of course, as soon as they began to play, it became clear that I may have been too quick to dismiss the new material. As disappointing as Elan Vital‘s songs seem to me on record, in a packed room, they do match the energy of the rest of the band’s repertoire. The band opened with “Selling the Wind” (laden with aforementioned accordion and sea-faring themes), and it was immediately clear that the fundamental things that make a Pretty Girls show great are still very much intact. Lead singer Andrea Zollo is always captivating with her jittery, yet somehow suave, dance moves, and her vocals are consistent — so sweet and powerful that they carry the song. While it seemed a short set, the band did manage to squeeze in quite a bit of material. Crowd-pleasers from Elan Vital included “The Nocturnal House”, “Parade”, and a danceable version of “Domino”. I was most captivated when they hit the high points on The New Romance, playing inspired versions of “Something Bigger, Something Better”, “This Is Our Emergency”, “The Teeth Collector”, and “The Grandmother Wolf.” The band’s last song was not “Speakers Push the Air”, as I had hoped, but another of my favorites, “All Medicated Geniuses.” This final number culminated in the whole of Irving Plaza shouting, “We all lie so well!”, fists in the air, driving it all home. In the end, it may have not been the best PGMG show I’ve seen, but I do have to admit, the band still flat-out rocks live. And so, I’ll be happily trekking it out to see them for a fourth time, no matter what their next record sounds like.