Sahara Hotnights + Army of Me

Band name changes aren’t always tragedies. Not every PR move goes from bad to worse. Stars such as Prince or Madonna might make the grievous decisions of dropping their royal/holy monikers in favor something unpronounceable or, even less conceivable, Esther. But for the smalltime band looking to reinvent themselves or trying to stay current, a name change isn’t always a bad idea. A few catchy indie rock tunes are infinitely more likable when the band playing them is called The Kicks, rather than still known by their former, much less palatable name: Ashtray Babyhead. The same can be said for Army of Me, nee Cactus Patch. Their old name, like the Spin Doctors, Toad the Wet Sprocket, or Barenaked Ladies, definitely was past its freshness date. “Cactus Patch” evokes the kind of cheerful, whimsical 1990s radio and college rock that nobody cares to remember. I recall seeing Cactus Patch perform in their hometown of D.C. four years ago, that their music seemed a bit too sincere and epic for such a cheeky band name. Now that they’ve made the switch to Army of Me, it makes more sense. After all, what band named after a Bjork song could be anything but sincere and epic? The band has only gotten better since those earlier days. This time around, they had the requisite nicer clothes, better hair cuts, but more importantly they had poise, the kind of nervous energy that keeps a crowd in thrall. After coming on too strong with a couple garagey numbers that came dangerously close to sounding like Strokes knockoffs, they hit their stride with a series of pristine, hermetically-sealed rock ballads. Fronted by singer Vince Scheuerman, the band’s solid rhythm overlaid with well-chosen guitar flourishes can make spaced-out songs such as “Frozen” and “These Hands” seem expansive without feeling overlong or melodramatic. Scheuerman may look the part of scrawny, floppy-haired, strung-out rockstar, but his tendencies of waving one hand up and down in the air as he plays with the high notes is pure diva, somewhere between Mariah Carey and Robert Plant. The band seemed to earn a few more fans with each song, as the room filled up and the applause got increasingly louder as the set progressed. By the time they closed their set, with the bittersweet “Come Down to D.C.”, they had won over the entire room, no mean feat for an opening act on a Sunday night. The headliners, Sahara Hotnights, did not fare so well. Sahara Hotnights hit it big two years ago during the peak of garage rock. They were billed, in that casually chauvinistic way that music industry press releases have of oversimplifying, as the female Hives. By now, however, the only clear relation between the two bands are their shared Nordic origins. Whereas The Hives new disc, Tyrannosaurus Hives shows that they have mastered that obscure equation for slightly formulaic pop punk that kept the Ramones popular for so long, Sahara Hotnights seem to be on the same fast track to obscurity as Clinic, stuck in a downward spiral and regurgitating pale revisions of their first, best work. Their new album Kiss and Tell plays it too safe, never matching the momentum of their first disc but also never breaking out in any new direction. In a live setting, this redundancy is all too obvious. Their set may have been brief, nearly shorter than Army of Me’s, but by the end of it the songs had begun to blur into an unfocused muddle, all of it sounding like a half-hearted cover of “Barracuda”. Lead singer Maria Andersson’s voice doesn’t quite hold up on its own. She keeps mostly to the sort of middle range tone that worked so well for Pat Benatar and Joan Jett, but can’t match either singer’s personality, humor or inflection. Their pace never slows or varies, and by the time they bring out their best known single, the chug of fuzzy guitar chords has already begun to feel more like a dirge than any exhilarating rock frenzy.