BrightestYoungThings: LiveDC: Future of the Left/ Drink Up Buttercup/ Uninhabitable Mansions @ RNR Hotel

all words Nicole Cohen
all photos Jane Briggs
Lets start at the beginning:

Drink Up Buttercup

Beating an aluminum trashcan with maracas while the severed head of a mannequin bounces up and down from atop the drummer’s hi-hat may seem kooky at first, but it was par for the course for Philadelphia band Drink Up Buttercup when they took the stage at the Rock'N'Roll Hotel on Thursday night.

Actually, according to band member Farzad Houshiarnejad, Thursday’s show was pretty tame. They usually beat the trashcan with both the maracas and the mannequin head.

Tame or no, their set was delightful.

I was impressed by guitarist James Harvey’s operatic vocals; hypnotized by bassist Ben Money’s performance; and fascinated by the band’s trademark keyboarding which can best be described as what you would expect to hear coming out of a demented merry-go-round. Overall, they delivered a decidedly voodoo- and at times carnival-like set.

And that’s pretty much what they were going for.

Both the trashcan beats and melodica stylings (in which you blow through a mouthpiece attached to a small keyboard) give the group a clamoring, junkyard sound.

On stage, Money – who Harvey credits with bringing the less conventional sound machines to the table – enters a kind of trance in which he prances about in a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt and plucks daintily at his bass like a character from “The Triplets of Belleville”.

Still, there’s one unexpected comparison to be made: between the harmonic oooh’s and aaah’s and three-man vocals, I can’t help but notice that Drink Up Buttercup sounds a hell of a lot like the Beatles.

Which is funny, because Harvey says he wasn’t actually a fan when he started songwriting.

“The basic melodies were already there before I ever even listened to a whole Beatles album,” Harvey says, “after that point I feel like I did use their examples to craft the songs a little bit more.”

You can check out their new single “Even Think” on their myspace page.

Uninhabitable Mansions

One look at the merch table will tell you that Uninhabitable Mansions is so much more than a band. Next to the CDs and T-shirts, they sell handmade books by guitarist Chris Diken and hand-printed yardsticks “for measuring things over one foot.”

The band’s singer and guitarist Robbie Guertin describes Uninhabitable Mansions as “the musical division of [a] larger collective” that, among other things, makes music, publishes books and includes members of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and Au Revoir Simone.

On stage with the Hotel’s fog machine chugging along, their performance is artful. Guertin sings as though he’s telling you secrets across a coffee table – his whispery vocals layering perfectly with singer and keyboardist Annie Hart, who tones in as she hopscotches behind the keyboard.

The music calms you down and picks you up at the same time. It’s upbeat, but not quite happy; resigned, but not depressing. The songs build, sneak up on you and suddenly you find yourself bobbing your head to the music.

Guertin and Hart manage keep things mellow, reeling in hearty percussion and instrumentals to strike a gratifying balance between loud and soft.

The two provide the kind of between-song banter that you expect from bands who have been playing together for years, except they haven’t been. Thursday’s show was part of the band’s first tour – or “jaunt,” as Guertin puts it – which has included a handful of performances along the East Coast.

And how about that crazy name? “Uninhabitable Mansions” is the result of guitarist Chris Diken’s reflections on religion after being raised Catholic.

“There’s this promise that if you’re good on Earth, you’ll be given a mansion on the River Jordan in the after life,” says Diken of what he was taught as a child. “So then I thought, what if people don’t go to heaven? There are all these mansions sitting on the River Jordan in Heaven but nobody goes there. They’re all sitting there uninhabited.”

And now for something completely different: Future of the Left

U.K. band Future of the Left is not what you expected to follow the night’s earlier psychedelic, indie acts.

The band took the stage in all black and the night suddenly went from soft whispers to guttural yells: think Bloc Party meets Metallica.

Singer Andrew Falkous’ voice carried over heavy distortion with lyrics like “Yeah, sure, Satan rules but that doesn’t mean I can’t be practical” and “It doesn’t look like a man/ It doesn’t talk like a man/ But does it fuck like a man?.”

As the meager beginnings of a mosh-pit started forming by the stage, I found myself nodding my head to the beat and thinking if I were angrier, this music might be more satisfying.

That said, Future of the Left still managed to put on quite a show. The highlight: bassist Kelson Louis Tregurtha Mathias at one point asked an audience member to play the bass for him so he could break dance in the middle of the crowd. And – oh yes – he did the worm.