Everybody Was In the French Resistance…Now! Takes The Fight To Schubas
By Kim Bellware in Arts & Entertainment on May 11, 2010 7:30PM
Eddie Argos takes umbrage with a lot of things, not the least of these, bad messages propagated by pop music. Everybody Was In the French Resistance…Now!—the self-described “concept band,” formed with girlfriend and Blood Arm keyboardist Dyan Valdès—is the Art Brut frontman’s effort to speak out and “correct the mistakes of pop songs past.”
It took only minutes after taking the stage to “La Marseillaise” Thursday night at Schubas for Argos and Valdès (clad in a skirt stitched from a French flag) to steer sharply away from the genteel decorum of the French national anthem and instead launch into an energetic, vaudeville-esque routine that kept the pace quick and the tongue firmly in cheek throughout the evening.
Opening with the endlessly catchy “Creeque Allies”—a response to The Mamas and the Papas ‘60s folk hit “Creeque Alley”— Argos and Valdès were each able to play their strengths: for Valdès, that meant her intuitively snappy keys and synth propelled the numbers against Argos’ pointedly earnest sing-speak observations. Argos spent plenty of time tossing out jokes to the crowd as well, trotting out his favorite of the tour:
“In Europe, when you open with a song about the Nazis, you get different reactions. When we played in Switzerland we sang, 'Everybody was in the French Resistance ... but you!' We get laughs here, but it doesn’t go over as well with them."
Having seen Art Brut in concert, we were aware of Argos’ tendency to veer off on self-aware tangents and work the crowd while his band noodles with their instruments; Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now! barely attempted the conventional concert flow, seeming instead like a USO number with Valdès as the lovely-looking straightwoman to Argos’ joke-cracking wise guy. But along with the signature stage banter, Argos brought a hefty shot of Art Brut’s crashing, power-cord-laden style as well as its ability to make a pretty monstrous sound out of very few players.
And while gimmicky in its concept, Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now! ultimately made the dynamic work, if not for the handful of genuinely catchy numbers like “Super Glue” (a response to Elastica’s “Vaseline”) and “Coal Digger” (the thinly-veiled send up of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”) than for the sheer entertainment value in watching Argos give lengthy (and hilarious) explanations of each song.
Save the cluster of front-row diehards, the Schubas crowd didn’t seem entirely sold at times, prompting Argos—ever the showman—to climb down from the stage and sing among the fans. By the time the band neared the end with “Think Twice (It’s Not Alright)” segueing into a ribbing of U2s “With Or Without You,” event the holdouts in the audience began to loosen up. It was clear not everyone in the room took Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now! seriously, but if you asked the band, they probably didn’t mean for you to, anyway.