BrightestYoungThings: Bear Hands With a Side of French Kicks

Bear Hands are from Brooklyn, NY.

You suspect it almost immediately. You can smell Williamsburg from the back of the club. You can spot the haircuts a mile away. And then the playing begins. It's your standard four-piece NYC band, right? Wait. Is that Isaac Brock singing? Were those guitar lines borrowed from The Fall? And that drummer... is he ripping the anti-rock stylings of former Chavez drummer James Lo? After a few songs, a reassessment is surely needed.

Bear Hands are tough to pigeonhole. Sure, they ape a rhythm-heavy, "post-punk" feel. The term "angular" is bound to be thrown at them once or twice, and the description isn't inaccurate. But the output they've shared with us in their relatively short but increasingly hyped career has revealed a nuance about their music that copping them as "indie rock" wouldn't do them justice. Having only released what amounted to a 4-track demo as a self-released "Golden" EP a year ago, their maturation as a band has become increasingly evident.

This rockability was on point Friday and newer tracks like "What a Drag" corroborate that claim. Saddling a leading jangly guitar riff to a shuffle-happy beat, the percussion builds, pauses and takes a nose dive into one of the most unlikely but catchiest chorus melodies I've heard this year:

"You've got them long nails
I'm dreaming of your goddamn long nails"

Singer Dylan Rau sets a seemingly languid tone with his monotonic, nasally snarl of a voice, and his lyrics supplement his timbre with an abstracted apathy reserved for the urban and post-urbane. But his boys in the band kick your neck into gear with a focused attack which combine far-from-monotonous and creative rhythmic shifts ala drum heavy Interpol, pungent and punchy bass-lines akin to early Modest Mouse, and repetive jagged come ambient guitar interplay remeniscent of Kitchens of Distinction. Filling out the set with tracks off their only recording, songs like "Vietnam, "Long Lean Queen," and "Golden," may not effectively shake the NYC post-punk association, but don't be surprised to show up to hear well-crafted pop songs veiled in their bohemian associations.

Did the French Kicks play?

Ahh yes, I remember. Kind of. It was tough for me distinguish their Friday set from any other set I've seen of them. Ever. And yes, they went to Sidwell and are DCers, but I can't for the life of me think of anything to say about them except that they are above average and sound "pretty." Sure, they have one or two standouts on each of their last couple of albums, and it's a sound that is incredibly tight and always very well produced. But the synthetic mod-pop they've been "crafting" ever since "One Time Bells" was apparently too raw-ged for them inspires nothing but a yawn in me.

Good thing the vegan nachos downstairs woke me up.

Go see Bear Hands.

Previously in Live DC:

3 years ago Patrick said

French Kicks..not to be confused with French toast. Either way yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.

Good review Aaron. Say, when's the next time these guys are playing. I wanted to come to the show/party, but I had to get up really early on Saturday.